—a summary
Punjab Human Rights Organization (PHRO) is concerned over the way the fourth estate especially the Press Council of India (PCI) has acted as the fifth column and whitewashed the excesses including rapes committed by the armed forces in Kashmir. It also concerns the PHRO that the PCI went to the extent of justifying the restrictions imposed by the Government on the press in Punjab, the police offensive against the non-conforming newspapers and journalists notwithstanding.
The PHRO is deeply concerned why the PCI team did not visit Punjab when certain Sikh journalists were persecuted, dismissed from service and put behind bars for years. It is intriguing why the PCI has totally ignored the Sikh journalists’ view point. The PCI report on Punjab is highly one-sided and it does not suggest anything to reflect the social variety in the composition of the media managements. Sikhs, Muslims, Christians or Dalit are grossly under-represented in the media groups. And that is why most of these groups have become mouthpieces of Arya Samaj, RSS or other Hindu fundamentalist organizations, which come in frequent conflict with Sikhs and Muslims.
The PHRO is of the firm view that the unabated crackdown on the Punjab Press is the result of the PCI report and a clandestine support extended to the Government by certain editors and newspaper managements. And the crackdown would be further stepped-up in view of High Court’s decision in the Daily Ajit case. Interestingly, the High Court is not lacking behind the PCI in this regard.
The PHRO’s understanding is that the whole human rights has been politicized world-wide. It is now all about spheres of influence and trade contracts. However, we in PHRO appreciate the concern shown by the U.S. Congress and the British M.Ps., who had visited Punjab and Kashmir
on their “fact-finding” mission and had informed their Parliament about the grave human rights situation in these two sensitive border states. No wonder, Amnesty International and other international human rights groups are not allowed to visit these states.
As many as 56 British MPs have now signed and supported motions on the Order Paper calling for the people of Kashmir to be allowed to determine their own destiny. “The human rights position in Punjab and Kashmir call for the British Government to make representations to the Government of India”, says British M.P., Max Madden, who had visited Punjab and Kashmir in 1990.
The shadow British foreign secretary, Gerald Kaufman, during his recent visit to Kashmir, said on August 11, 1991 that “the suffering of the people of Kashmir has gone too long. They should get the right to live with peace and honour in their land”. State repression is so high in the Kashmir valley that more than 200 Muslim families had moved into Pakistan.
In Punjab during the month of June, 1991, the security forces killed 167 Sikh activists in faked encounters and alleged inter-group clashes, about a dozen Sikh youths killed in fake ambushes and dozens other Sikhs were eliminated by the police “cats” force and police-backed vigilante groups.
A number of militant’s sympathisers, their women and children were kept in illegal police custody. Some of them are still rotting in police interrogation chambers.
This 40-page book-let (A PHRO Watch, June 1991, pp 89- 128) is a compilation of numerous investigations. It contains reports such as ‘The state attacks on the Sikh Press’, ‘Trial by media of a Sikh professor’, Police help extortionists in militants’ garb’, ‘MP’s SPOs. loot people posing as militants’, ‘Police, the summary executioner and ‘The state officials are afraid of the police’.
Earlier, the PHRO published two book-lets, “Chander Shekhar’s multi-pronged offensive” and “The Rape of Sikh-women”, covering its reports upto May 1991. With this booklet we cover the first half of 1991.
Ludhiana August 16, 1991
D.S. Gill
Chairman, PHRO
