Human Rights --- Punjab

[japmans]

hey.. just wanted to know if anyone had seen this:

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/01/india11959.htm

[japmans]

http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/27/india11792.htm

and this... but in this specific article.... HRW claims as fact that Sikhs were also involved in bombings and innocent killings..

[crayzy]

they probably were

[Singhstah]

Singhs NEVER killed innocent people, GOI released the BLACK CATS, they were made to look like singhs and would kill innocent people, to give the movement a bad name.

[Prem]

I don't think we can say that no Sikhs did bad things back then. The evidence documented by reliable sources says there were excesses commited by militants.

[Lion(LK)King]

Vaheguru Ji Ka Khalsa Vaheguru Ji Ki Fateh.

Daas has read a few books on 1984. It seems pretty clear , from interviewing some police officers, and confessions by Gill that cats were pretty successful. It seems as if the vast majority of the innocent killed are by cats. Where there Sikhs militants who killed innocent people?

Reading Bibi Cynthias book, one realises how the Jhujharoos of the time thought. I recommend everyone out to read the truth, read that book. In it she interviews quite a few of them, and the vast majority of them condemn killing of innocent people. On several occasions it turns out the Singhs didn't shoot, even though they had their target, because it could risk killing an innocent - so they cancelled and decided to do the operation later on. In one (one of like 10-15 interviews), the militant, confesses detonating a bomb in a market full of Hindus. I can't remember the exact cause why they did it... however their aim was clear - to target innocent Hindus on the market. It seems plausible to say that most of the people killed are either made up, fake, or killed by black cats. There were some militants indeed who did kill innocent people unfortunately. Tully (who is generally pretty bias against Sikhs), mentions that during the Delhi riots, people were told stories on national and government radio stations about trains arriving with dead bodies of Hindus, to fuel the fire against Sikhs. Inderjit Singh Jaijee in his politics of genocide gives several cases where police were caught of being dressed up as Sikhs and looting people's houses, and were later on eliminated by the higher authorities as they had been exposed.

My Conclusion : Although most of the killings were absolutely not made by Sikhs, there was some kala in the daal. In other words, yes we did have some gullible militants who killed innocent Hindus, presumably being inspired by others who penetrated themselves into the movement. Whereas the government exaggerates it, and thus making a big media blow out of it, this is probably where HRW got there info from.

It is vital to remember that these organisations, HRW; and Amnesty are still banned from entering India, so they really don’t have much first hand info on what's going on in India, and those small Human Rights Organisations trying to do something are badly beaten, as seen in Bibi Cynthias & Bhai Ram Narayan Kumar Ji's report known as "Disappearances in Punjab" =>

http://panthkhalsa.org/humanrights/index.php

Neither of us has any personal stake in the Punjab conflict. Neither of us is Sikh, though we are both regarded as experts on Sikh affairs.

Our interest here is humanitarian only. We believe we have a moral obligation to speak out on an issue that has not received the international attention it warrants.

Heightening awareness of the push for accountability has led to a rise in calls for the necessity of impunity for rights abusers. In addition, there have been deliberate attempts to thwart the efforts of human rights workers. Since India has never allowed Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch or other internationally respected organizations to visit Punjab, grassroots workers have provided the bulk of the information that has come out. But these workers are then particularly vulnerable to harassments and threats in India. Many of the activists now working with the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab have been themselves arrested, tortured, and jailed (Kumar among them). Since the work of documenting disappearances has begun in earnest, an elaborate hoax was orchestrated to frame several activists in a purported plot to break Sikh militants out of Burail jail. This has the effect not only of tying up the time and resources of the remaining activists - who now have to mobilize to get their colleagues released - but of identifying human rights activism with sympathy for militancy in the public mind.

On July 18, 1998, three members of the Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab came out of India to speak about the efforts of the Committee at Columbia University in New York. These were Ram Narayan Kumar (current author), Amar Singh Chahal (Lawyers for Human Rights) and Inderjit Singh Jaijee (Movement Against State Repression). Also speaking at the human rights symposium were Cynthia Mahmood (current author), Mary Pike (Center for Constitutional Law), and Ami Laws (Physicians for Human Rights) from the United States. Just days after the seminar, word was received that Jaspal Singh Dhillon, another member of the Committee for Coordination, head of the Human Rights and Democracy Forum, and close associate of Jaswant Singh Khalra's, had been arrested in India once again in connection with the jailbreak conspiracy. A string of volunteers for the Committee for Coordination were picked up for questioning at the same time.

We fear for the well-being and indeed for the lives of our colleagues who continue to work to document the egregious abuse of state power exemplified in the phenomenon of "disappearance."

Even the human rights organisations fear their well begin, as whilst they are trying to free innocents, their own colleagues are being trapped!

[Heera Singh]

i'm sure there are some Sikhs who would have killed 'innocent' people in that time period... probably mostly because of retaliation.. in that type of situation i's really hard to control ur emotions and control your actions... we can't stick the blame ONLY on the GOI...

but.. like i said... in that time, emotions are high... in the heat of battle people sometimes do things they normally wouldn't...

Vaheguru..

[mann_kaum_layee_qurbaan]

sikhs love killings sikhs, it has been this way from the day sikhi started. almost all the cops who killed sikh youth were sikhs, gills, sandhus, brars, etc etc. the whole movement just brought out the natural sikh behavior which is to undermine each other and destroy each others interests for personal glory. you can't have a sikh movement without a counter-sikh movement by other sikhs...it is an endless cycle of the sikh, punjbai sikhs that is, psyche.......

[Lion(LK)King]

Ironic how the three PP killers of Bhai Jaswant Singh Khalra (Human Rights activist, who dod loads of Seva, and inspireds loads of sevadars to do Seva, such as Ram Narayan Kumar, Bibi Cynthia etc)

all have Sikh first AND last names.