Sir,
A free press is the sine qua non of a truly democratic country.
Even though India has again revealed that the press there is not free, journalists still ritualistically speak of it as “the world’s largest democracy.”
(On matters of real importance involving life and death and the fate of whole people’s the Indian government invariably muzzles the news media as it did the week of Jan. 25,1990 when it declared Kashmira truth free zone.
The Kashmir is whose right to self-determination is recognized even by the U.N., are like the Sikhs and other captive nations of India, kept in submission by the brute force of the Indian army and paramilitary police units.
These forces are aided by India’s servile judiciary not independent from the executive as it is in free countries, Thus we saw the spectacle of an Indian magistrate named G.H. Abbas working hand in glove with the government to suppress the news media in Kashmir where thousands of people had taken to the streets to proclaim their independence. Journalists were told by this magistrate that if they left their hotels but did not leave the country they would be subject to arrest and imprisonment. Not content with that, the magistrate also decreed that journalists who did not leave their hotels the next day would be thrown out of them without curfew passes (leading to their inevitable arrest), Police were stationed outside the hotel where 30 Indian and foreign journalists were staying to make sure that journalists did not move out of their quarters. In addition, Indian authorities locked up the telex office and the telephone exchange was ordered not to accept press calls. Telephones belonging to some reporters mysteriously went out of order.
These events recall the 1984 news ban and curfew in the Punjab were tens of thousands of Sikhs were openly slaughtered by the Indian army, and more recently the 1988 news embargo imposed by the Indian government on the infamous Bidar massacre where Sikh students were murdered with police complicity, and Sikh college buildings were torched. As a result the outside world never heard the story, the massacre being considered history by news organizations by the time it emerged from the veil of Indian government censorship.
The new government of VP Singh must recognize that it is time for glasnost in India too, but the likelihood of that happening is small because as Mr. Singh doubtless knows, “the truth will set you free” and that is the last thing that the Indian leadership wants,
Gurmit Singh Aulakh Washington D.C.
Article extracted from this publication >> February 9, 1990
