India Condemned Over Sikh 'missing Thousands'

[Soho Roadie]

I came across this article and thought it would be appropriate to share with the Sangat, please read:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/story/0,,2193909,00.html

[nanosecond]

Good report..............must be publicized more

[lsingh]

This is the actual report from Ensaaf

http://www.ensaaf.org/

[lsingh]

This is the actual report from Ensaaf

http://www.ensaaf.org/

Counter-insurgency operations

New report on human rights violations in Punjab released

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, October 19

The union government must take concrete steps to hold accountable members of security forces who killed, or were responsible for the “disappearance” of youth besides having allegedly tortured Sikh youth during counter-insurgency operations in Punjab, demands a new report released by a human rights watch, Ensaaf and human rights lawyer R.S. Bains.

The government should establish a commission of inquiry, a special prosecutor’s office, and an extensive reparations programme.

The 125-page report, “Protecting the killers: a policy of impunity in Punjab, India,” examines the challenges faced by victims and their relatives in pursuing legal avenues for accountability for the human rights abuses allegedly perpetrated during the government’s counter-insurgency campaign. The report describes the immunity enjoyed by officials responsible for these alleged violations and the total failure of India’s judicial and state institutions to provide justice for victims’ families.

The report admits that in the beginning of the 1980s, Sikh separatists in Punjab committed serious human rights abuses, including the massacre of civilians, attacks upon Hindu minorities in the state, and indiscriminate bomb attacks in crowded places. It goes on to say that during counter-insurgency operations in Punjab from 1984 to 1995, human rights abuses were committed against the Sikhs. None of the key architects of this strategy have been brought to justice.

A key case discussed in detail in the report is the Punjab “mass cremations case,” in which the security forces are involved in thousands of killings and secret cremations throughout Punjab to hide the evidence of wrongdoing. The case is currently before the National Human Rights Commission, a body specially empowered by the Supreme Court to address this case. However, the commission has narrowed its efforts to merely establishing the identity of the individuals who were secretly cremated in three crematoria in just one district of Punjab. It has rejected cases from other districts and has ignored the intentional violations of human rights perpetrated by India’s security forces.

For more than a decade, the commission has failed to independently investigate a single case and explicitly refuses to identify any responsible officials. “The National Human Rights Commission has inexplicably failed in its duties to investigate and establish exactly what happened in Punjab,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch.

The report discusses the case of Jaswant Singh Khalra, a leading human rights defender in Punjab who was kidnapped and then murdered in October, 1995 by government officials after being held in illegal detention for almost two months. Despite credible eyewitness testimony that police chief K.P.S. Gill was directly involved in interrogating Khalra in illegal detention just days prior to Khalra’s murder, yet nothing was done in this regard.

[lsingh]

This is the actual report from Ensaaf

http://www.ensaaf.org/

Th report is also on the Human Rights Watch site

http://www.hrw.org/