The Man Next Door

[birkhalsa]

The Man Next Door

By Jeetinder Kaur

http://www.sikhe.com

"I believe in God and in life after death. When I die and come before the 6 million, I will say, I didn't forgot you…" - Simon Wiesenthal, Auschwitz Survivor and famous Nazi Hunter.

Unrecognized, walking free somewhere in Calgary, Canada, in the midst of the Sikh community is a man. In his 70s with a turban on his head. Gurmail Singh, 'Bai' as he was once commonly known on the other side of the earth, is responsible for the torture of thousands of Sikhs and, at a conservative estimate, the deaths of hundreds.

Verowal, District Amritsar, 1985: Bai slits the throat of an18-year old boy in front of his mother. The body is thrown into a jeep and driven away.

At the time a Station House Officer of the local police station, Bai was the team leader of one of the most cruel interrogation units in the Punjab. And this was just in a day's work.

As news of the incident spread, the broken, scared villagers feebly protested. Frantic, helpless, terrified at the brutal ways in which 'Bai' killed people at will. Anyone, even pregnant women, like Kamaljit Kaur, Joga Singh's wife, of village Batala, Amritsar.

There was nowhere to go. Nothing could be done. 'Bai' was in charge of the Mal Mandi Interrogation Center of Amritsar nicknamed the butcher's yard. There was no normal interrogation for Sikhs. They were torture chambers, where the physical torture went on for days on end. Everyone was fair game, and 'Bai' was good a

t his job. After several promotions when he retired as Deputy Superintendent of Police, 'Bai' was further rewarded with Special Police Officer status for an additional five years to carry on his good work.

Many perpetrators behind the brutal tortures are now in their 40's, 50's and 60's. Some still police the streets, others are in retirement. But they are all largely unknown, unrecognized.

"In the worst scenario," says a torture survivor, "The community must at least make sure that these people are never allowed to live a normal life. They should be cast out from our society, from restaurants - wherever people see them in public - humiliated and treated with disdain so that they do not forget the way they tortured our people to death."

Despite rhetoric, Sikh human rights activists across the world have not linked up to work in an organised manner supportive of each other. Not only are the perpetrators of the holocaust forgotten but also so are the victims.

Like the family of Bageecha Singh.

Bageecha Singh was eighteen years old when he innocently joined the Auxiliary Guards, the Indian border police. Soon, however, he was sick when he saw how many Sikhs were being tortured in jails and could stomach it no more. He ran away, abandoning his home, and joined the militant movement.

In the wake of his departure, for years Bageecha Singh's family was persecuted. His mother underwent ghotna at Mal Mandi - strung out by the limbs with policemen standing on her legs, crushing the muscles. To this day she suffers pain. Bageecha Singh's sister too was tortured, and threatened that her fate may be that of the dozens of girls like her who were killed and thrown in rivers. To this day she is traumatized and suffers physical pain. Bageecha's younger brother was so severely tortured that even now he can barely work the family's meager landholding.

"Even if someone signed a document to kill the Jews, even if they were a medic who was told to cov

er up the brutal killing of a Jew…everyone within the system of fascism is a perpetrator," said Simon Wiesenthal, who chased Nazis into the grave.

In contrast, the Sikhs have not been able to even identify and document any of the direct perpetrators, let alone the chain of perpetrators - the judges, medics, civil servants, politicians, administrators, who were the face of fascism behind the genocide.

To the survivors it seems like it all happened only yesterday. They live on in an unreal world that has left them to reconcile with their broken families and their shattered lives. A world that has turned its face away to a comfortable, temporary reality of its own. But for how long?

For Gurmail Singh is by no means the only perpetrator. Nor the final one.

Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, 95, spent nearly sixty years..his entire lifetime.. to identify, name and shame every perpetrator behind the Jewish holocaust. He often did this without the support of the Jewish state or of the Jewish people worldwide. Many institutions used his name but only a handful of researchers remained with him.

In November 1977, the Simon Wiesenthal Center was founded. Today, it is a 400,000 member strong international center for Holocaust remembrance, the defense of human rights and the Jewish people