$10,000 reward for identification for the rapists of Sikh Women

[lsingh]

At a time when the human rights situation is under the scanner in the West , Sikhs should focus on getting justice and stop some of the petty disputes.

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2012-12-31/india/36078581_1_sikh-women-sfj-gurpatwant-singh-pannun

Rights group announces reward of $10,000 for identification of each rapist of November 1984 massacre

IP Singh, TNN Dec 31, 2012, 01.24PM IST

Tags:

• Delhi gang rape|
• 1984 riots|
• 1984 massacre of Sikhs

JALANDHAR: As there is strong anger in the country against the rape and rapists, Sikhs For Justice (SFJ), an international human rights group advocating justice for the victims of November 1984, while showing solidarity and sending its "deepest condolences" to the family of the Delhi gang rape victim, questioned the silence of the Indian administration, politicians and the justice system over the rape of Sikh women in broad daylight during first week of November 1984.

The NGO has announced a reward of $10,000 for the identification and prosecution of those who raped Sikh women during November 1984. "The reward of $10,000 will be given to the witnesses who come forward with the identification of rapist and their prosecution," said SFJ legal advisor Gurpatwant Singh Pannun in a statement issued on Monday.

[JasSinghKhalsa]

$10K reward is nothing, Indian politicians will reward much better than this.

The current uproar in India is because either the culprits have no politician connection or the victim's family has strong politician connection.

[lsingh]

Sikh issues getting some coverage in Western press.

'A New York-based human rights group, Sikhs for Justice, expressed condolences over the New Delhi rape victim’s death and appealed to the Indian government to break its 28-year silence on the sexual assaults on Sikh women after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. In retaliation for the killing by two Sikh bodyguards, a weeklong rampage left 3,000 dead, untold numbers of Sikh women raped and Sikh-owned businesses looted and burned.

The top U.N. human rights official called for “urgent and rational debate” on legislative changes and reform of a misogynistic national mind-set.

“What is needed is a new public consciousness and more effective and sensitive enforcement of the law in the interests of women,” said Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.'

LA Times

The gang rape that took the life of a 23-year-old Indian medical student has catapulted the young woman into martyrdom and galvanized an outraged nation to demand better protection of its women.

In place of New Year’s Eve revelry, Indians gathered in solemn candlelight vigils Monday night, appealing for tougher laws and a change of the national mind-set that has long tolerated sexual assaults as an unavoidable evil in India’s teeming urban centers.

Politicians and human rights advocates have a long road ahead to reform antiquated laws that only vaguely define sexual assaults as criminal behavior and to compel law enforcement and medical workers to cease subjecting victims to “virginity tests” and other humiliations.

Such insensitive handling probably explains the low incidence of reporting rape in India despite women’s insistence that it is so pervasive as to chase them from city streets after dark.

National Crime Records Bureau statistics show 24,200 rapes reported in 2011, or fewer than two cases per 100,000 population. That compares, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, with 27 per 100,000 in the United States, 50-plus per 100,000 in many Caribbean countries and more than 60 per 100,000 in Scandinavia, where crimes are reliably prosecuted, encouraging victims to pursue their attackers.

Even in the emotional aftermath of the woman's death Saturday, some officials have continued to blame the victims. An opposition lawmaker, Banwari Lal Singhal of Rajasthan, proposed banning skirts for schoolgirls and making them wear trousers to avoid provoking unwanted advances. Meanwhile, the lawmaker’s party, Bharatiya Janata, called for punishing rapists with chemical castration and for imposing the death penalty for the most heinous sexual crimes.

In the Dec. 16 attack that cost the medical student her life, five men and a teenage boy lured her and her boyfriend into a bus that appeared to be a public commuter vehicle. Inside, the men beat the couple with metal rods and raped the woman with the blunt instruments, inflicting irreparable organ damage.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has named a former Supreme Court judge to head an investigation of the attack and to propose legal reforms. Both the ruling Congress Party and Bharatiya Janata have called for laws that would require more responsive treatment of sexual assault victims and fast-tracking of criminal cases that currently take as long as a decade to make their way through backlogged courts.

“Today we pledge that she will get justice, that her fight will not have been in vain,” Congress Party leader Sonia Gandhi said Monday in a national broadcast. She called for “swift and fitting punishment for the perpetrators" and collective national resolve to eradicate sexual violence.

The Times of India reported a surge in demands by women for handgun permits, as well as soaring registrations for self-defense classes. But in testimony to the pervasiveness of violence against women, another fatal gang rape was reported in West Bengal state.

“It cannot be business as usual anymore," insisted an editorial in the Hindustan Times. The Hindu Business Line website said the student’s tragic death “jolted our collective consciousness to stop brushing under the carpet the harsh and brutal reality of how 21st Century India treats its women.”

India lacks uniform guidelines for medical treatment and examination of sexual assault victims, often exposing the traumatized women to degrading procedures, said Meenakshi Ganguly, Human Rights Watch director for South Asia. She pointed to a 2010 report by her group that documented rampant incidents of medical personnel making “unscientific” manual evaluations of whether rape victims were “habituated to sexual intercourse.”

A New York-based human rights group, Sikhs for Justice, expressed condolences over the New Delhi rape victim’s death and appealed to the Indian government to break its 28-year silence on the sexual assaults on Sikh women after the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1984. In retaliation for the killing by two Sikh bodyguards, a weeklong rampage left 3,000 dead, untold numbers of Sikh women raped and Sikh-owned businesses looted and burned.

The top U.N. human rights official called for “urgent and rational debate” on legislative changes and reform of a misogynistic national mind-set.

“What is needed is a new public consciousness and more effective and sensitive enforcement of the law in the interests of women,” said Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva.

She reiterated a plea from the office’s affiliated Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women for India to amend its legal definition of rape from the vague allusion to “offending the modesty of women” to more specifically outlaw physical assault. The group has also urged officials to recognize marital rape as a criminal offense.

“This is a national problem, affecting women of all classes and castes, and will require national solutions,” said Navi, a South African of Indian descent. “Let us hope that 2013 will be the year the tide is turned on violence against women in India and all women can walk free without fear.”

[lsingh]

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/sikh-rights-group-decries-silence-over-1984-victims/article4256489.ece

Sikh rights group decries “silence” over 1984 victims

Sarabjit Pandher

Share · Comment (6) · print · T+

Rights group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), while sending its “deepest condolences” to the family of the Delhi gang rape victim, has questioned the silence of the administration, politicians and the justice system over the rape of women of the Sikh community in broad daylight during the genocide that followed the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984.

“Buses used”

In a release, the SFJ said it shared the pain of the family who lost her for no fault of her own. During the November 1984 riots, Delhi public buses were used to transport squads that raped Sikh women in November 1984, it alleged.

Responding to Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s statement that as a woman and mother, she could understand the protesters’ emotions, the SFJ wondered if she had conveniently forgotten the “vicious cycle of rape and murder let loose against Sikh women in 1984 at the behest of her husband.”

Why did she or Prime Minister Manmohan Singh never visit the hundreds of Sikh victims languishing in “Widow Colony” just a few miles from the Parliament of the greatest democratic country, it asked.

For the last 28 years, successive Indian governments had given open immunity to those who perpetrated violent crimes against Sikh women, it said.

Khap leaders’ remarks

Meanwhile, the Haryana unit of the CPI(M) has taken strong exception to certain utterances by the “so-called Khap leaders.”

They reportedly described most of the rape complaints as fake and consensual.

The party objected to their reported opinion that most of the rape complaints were made for extorting money from the accused persons.

State unit secretary Inderjit Singh, in a statement, expressed grave concern at such “outrageous” remarks, particularly at a time when the entire country was displaying its anger against incidents of rapes and sexual assault on women.

The party also took a serious view of the fact that while cases were being perpetrated unabated, Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, who holds the Home portfolio, was “maintaining an astonishing silence.”

Keywords: Rights group Sikhs for Justice, Delhi gang-rape case, 1984 anti-sikh genocide, Indira Gandhi assassination,

[proactive]

I'm glad Sikhs for Justice aren't getting on the Delhi rape bandwagon and are showing the hypocrisy of Sonia Gandhi and her chumcha Manmohan. They could easily have either just kept quiet or do what other Sikh organisations and political parties and get on the bandwagon by making statements about the Delhi rape without mentioning that Sikhs suffered a hundred times worst than what happened to that girl.

[lsingh]

I'm glad Sikhs for Justice aren't getting on the Delhi rape bandwagon and are showing the hypocrisy of Sonia Gandhi and her chumcha Manmohan. They could easily have either just kept quiet or do what other Sikh organisations and political parties and get on the bandwagon by making statements about the Delhi rape without mentioning that Sikhs suffered a hundred times worst than what happened to that girl.

Yes at a time when there is focus in the West on human rights issues in India and the arrest for torture of the Nepalese army officer in the UK, Sikhs should be approaching the media to raise the issue of the Sikh genocide if they get the chance to comment on these stories. Plenty of Indians in the Uk have been appearing on news programmes, have Sikhs commented on the rape cases they have faced?

[singh135]

Excellent progress

[proactive]

Sikh organisations like Sikhs for Justice and Sikh Council UK should be getting affidavits prepared of Sikhs who suffered during Operation Bluestar so that when Brar comes back to this country for the court case he is also arrested and charged. Even the threat should be enough for him not to come and perhaps those guys could get off.

[lsingh]

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Punjab/PunjabAbroadUSA/US-court-to-hear-human-rights-case-against-Badal/SP-Article1-985219.aspx

US court to hear human rights case against Badal

IANS
Washington, January 05, 2013

First Published: 11:12 IST(5/1/2013)
Last Updated: 22:25 IST(5/1/2013)

A US federal judge has set an evidentiary hearing for January 29 in a human rights violations case against the Punjab chief minister, Parkash Singh Badal, to resolve basic jurisdictional issues. Wisconsin judge Rudolph T Randa set the hearing on a petition by Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) that seeks the court's protection against alleged threats and abuse to the families of the plaintiffs in India by Badal's agents. The CM, through his lawyers, has sought dismissal of the case on the ground of lack of service of summons after two special agents from the state department's diplomatic security service claimed in sworn statements that Badal had not been present at Oak Creek High School on August 9 as claimed by the plaintiffs.

During evidentiary hearing, plaintiffs will challenge Badal's claim that on August 9, he was at Boelter Super Store in Milwaukee and not at Oak Creek High School, where a ceremony was being held in the memory of the Sikh victims of the Wisconsin gurdwara shooting. "To refute Badal's claim, we will present evidence and witnesses to prove that Badal was served the court summons personally by Christopher G Kratochvil of State Processing Service Inc at Oak Creek High School, Wisconsin," said SFJ legal adviser Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

The lawyer described judge Randa's order as "a major step forward in seeking compensatory and punitive damages against Badal for his role in commanding and protecting a police force involved in continuous human rights violations against Sikhs in Punjab." The plaintiffs are the SFJ, Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) led by Simranjit Singh Mann, and people who claim to have been tortured during the Badal regime.

[lsingh]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20910661

The rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in Delhi sparked outrage across India. But does a visit to a neighbourhood central to the story offer any clues as to where the country goes next?

A small lemon caught my eye as I reached the front door of the brick hut where the bus driver, one of those accused in this horrific case, lives with his brother.

It was hanging on a wire from the wooden door post - placed there last week, a neighbour said - as a charm to ward off the evil eye.

This tightly-packed south Delhi settlement of single storey dwellings is now under a cloud of shame - because four of the six arrested for the savage rape and killing of the young woman live here.

The case has also badly tarnished India's image abroad.

As ever, journalists reporting this story have come looking for symbols of the bigger picture - and this place has now come to signify the dark side of India many see as being behind this gruesome crime.

Most of its residents are migrants who have come to Delhi from impoverished rural areas, widely seen as the cradle of regressive attitudes to women, where figures show rapes are commonplace but rarely reported because of the social stigma.

Fitting perhaps that the district takes its name from a nearby shrine to a man born of India's untouchable castes.

And yet the narrative many have given this place didn't entirely fit. This is not a tumble-down slum for "just arrived" rural migrants, as some reports have suggested, the soil of the fields still under their nails.

Many residents have been here 20 years. It's far from comfortable living, but far better than many slum settlements I've seen - with solidly built stone dwellings, neat and brightly painted - and everyone has basic services like electricity, water and sewage.

"Don't think we're all like the accused," said another neighbour. "When you grind wheat to make flour, insects will come out with it too," she said.

Continue reading the main story “Start Quote

There is plenty of evidence that India's wealthier, more educated classes can be just as sexist in their attitudes towards girls and women”

End Quote

All the children go to school every day. And as we were talking to neighbours I noticed three older boys listening. They all spoke perfect English, it turned out, and were doing business studies at a local college.

They would not have looked out of place among the many young people protesting over the rape in recent weeks.

Yes they knew some of the accused, but you should not assume we are all like them, they said. And it got me thinking about the many different realities to this story.

Along with many others, I have reported the middle class Indians, young and old who have been taking the lead.

The 23-year-old woman's death has led to a surge in interest in self-defence classes in India

The narrative has been - one I have gone with too - that these are the people standing up for a more liberal, open country. But there is plenty of evidence that India's wealthier, more educated classes can be just as sexist in their attitudes towards girls and women.

Every year, thousands of girls are aborted because of a traditional preference for sons - medical staff are bribed into revealing the sex of the child.

It is leading to an increasingly skewed ratio of women to men. And some of the worst figures are in rich south Delhi.

Just like in a small village, many middle class families also prefer a son to inherit their property. One of the many consequences of having fewer women is increased trafficking for forced marriage and prostitution - and so the cycle of abuse goes on.

And while India's Congress party-led government has condemned the gang rape and promised new fast-track courts to deal with it, no politician has addressed the wider cultural issues.

Yet something has also changed, in the questions people are asking, how they are acting.

Showing solidarity

During the week, I interviewed a woman who had survived a rape - and years after the attack is still struggling to get justice.

She joined the protests on the streets of Delhi too, where there were plenty of reports of men using the opportunity to grope women.

But she said she was also struck by how many young men intervened to protect her and her friends, forming a circle around them if anyone got too close.

Musicians and Bollywood film-makers are suddenly under pressure to justify songs and movies that portray women as sex objects.

Harrowing details from an interview the victim's friend has given about the attack and the way the authorities treated them may encourage even more soul-searching.

And one image sticks in my mind from these past weeks - an Indian man sitting at one of the protests with a candle at his feet, quietly showing solidarity with the brutally murdered girl.

And in front of him he had a placard which read: "Let us look at ourselves first."

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