The ‘crime’ of documenting human rights violations

The registration of grave charges of murder and criminal conspiracy against respected academics and human rights defenders Nandini Sundar of Delhi University and Archana Prasad of JNU, and Sanjay Parate (Chhattisgarh CPI (M) state secretary), among others, is the latest chapter in a long ignoble saga of open police bullying of journalists, rights workers and dissenters in the troubled Bastar region.

They are charged with organising on the night of November 4 2016, the murder with sharp weapons of a tribal man Shamnath Baghel in his village Nama. The police claims that the murder was to avenge Baghel’s protests against Maoist violence in his village.

as ‘fabricated’ and ‘a direct assault on our democratic polity’ which ‘indicates the growing trend of authoritarianism in the state’ by the CPI (M). This is the latest in a long roll-call of cases filed by the local police against those who tried to record the truth of what was happening in this troubled region.

Bastar is one of the most dispossessed enclaves of the country. Outsider settlers savagely dispossessed local tribal communities of their lands and forest produce, trapping them in cycles of debt.

Dispossession from their lands and forests continued in the hands of the ‘developmental state’, for roads, factories, mines and the so-called ‘scientific management of forests. This dispossession became even more acute with the advance of the neo-liberal state, as for-profit powerful companies grew impatient to extract the forest and mineral wealth of the lands occupied by indigenous tribal communities.

This ferocious, sustained and multi-armed oppression and dispossession led some tribal people to support and join far-left Maoist groups, who promised them justice and protection.

The state responded, not by addressing the massive injustices and exploitation, but by constructing this in the public discourse as a grave security challenge to the integrity of the nation. It unleashed what is not less than a civil war, with various arms of the state using every weapon in their arsenals. It is now standard drill for villages to be routinely raided and for villagers to be rounded up and detained for alleged Maoist sympathies. Some do support the Maoists against what they see as an oppressive state, whereas many of them are only by-standers and persons coerced into support.

Their predicament and insecurity was aggravated further, when the state encouraged armed vigilante groups of surrendered Maoists to turn upon their own people with rape, arson, intimidation and killings, silently or openly supported by the police. The Salwa Judum for four bloody years between 2005 and 2008, undertook mass burning of villages and forced the residents into camps, as well as unleashed massive killings and rapes. Although Salwa Judum is banned by the Supreme Court, new vigilante groups are being openly encouraged by the police administration.

The Maoists in the meanwhile have also splintered into rival factions, and often are riddled with violent rivalries and corruption. They enjoy some real support from oppressed tribal people, especially some young people, but are also known to resort to brutal intimidation, targeted killings of alleged ‘informers’, and periodic violent assaults on security forces, leading to the tragic loss of life of large numbers of usually junior members of the forces.

The ‘crime’ of Nandini Sundar and her colleagues has been that they have bravely both documented the recurring human rights violations of the security forces and vigilante groups propped up by the state; and challenged these in the country’s highest courts. It was Sundar’s petition in the Supreme Court that led it to ban the Salwa Judum. But especially since the IG Police (Bastar range) SRP Kalluri took charge, new vigilante formations like the Salwa Judum have surfaced. Baghel who was killed belonged to one such vigilante formation called Tangiya (meaning ‘axe’).

Caught in the unending cycles of violence of a security state and of militants of the extreme left, there seems no end to the suffering of the indigenous communities which have long inhabited the forested plateau and hills of Bastar. Attempts to silence independent and credible voices like those of Sundar and Prasad will only leave them even more isolated and hopeless.

Source: Hindustan Times, 15-11-2016

Going over to the dark side

The arrest of a group of men in Kannur in early October raises questions about the influence wielded by the Islamic State on misguided Muslim youth in south India.

“My son hasn’t done anything wrong. He’s not that kind of a boy. He’s been working and supporting the family for the past 15 years, and now they have taken him away,” says Hasina, mother of Manseed Mahmood, one of the six men arrested from Kerala recently for alleged terrorist links. Standing in the sit-out of their single-storey house in Aniyaram, some 25 km south of Kannur, Hasina opens up about her 30-year-old son with tears in her eyes and folded hands. Manseed, who was working in Qatar as an office assistant, came home with his wife on September 30, two days before he and his friends were arrested from Kanakamala, a hilltop location some 3 km away from his home. “He told us some friends would come home and that we should prepare food for them as well. We never knew who was coming. He went out in the morning and then what we heard was that he got arrested from Kanakamala,” says Nafiza, Manseed’s grandmother.

Arrests on a hilltop

Kanakamala is a small village on the border of Kannur and Kozhikode districts. The eponymous hill, part of the Western Ghats, is revered by the locals because they believe it possesses spiritual powers. It takes at least 10 minutes by foot to reach the hilltop where an ashram of Nataraja Guru, the successor disciple of social reformer Narayana Guru, is located. The hilltop is usually deserted unless there are some events being held at the ashram, the only building existing there. Local police say Manseed may have chosen this place for a meeting because it might escape the attention of the public. But intelligence people say Manseed and others were under surveillance for almost a year and the Kanakamala meeting was the third of its kind.

A local police officer involved in the operation says he got a call on October 2 from his superiors to get ready for an important raid. He and other police officers joined officials from the Intelligence Bureau and the National Investigation Agency (NIA), who flew in from other parts of the country. When they reached Kanakamala, Manseed and others were standing in a circle next to a telephone tower on the hilltop discussing something. “They didn’t run when we approached them. Nor did they resist when we detained them,” says the police officer.

According to the NIA, Manseed and four others were arrested from Kanakamala, while an accomplice of theirs, Ramshad Nageelan Kandiyil, was picked up from Kuttiady in Kozhikode district. The NIA terms them an Islamic State (IS)-inspired module that has “entered into a criminal conspiracy to commit terrorist acts by collecting explosives and other material for targeting important persons and places of public importance in various parts of south India”. All in the team are youngsters from different parts of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, Manseed being the only local. Abu Basheer came from Coimbatore, while Swalih Mohammed, a native of Chelakkara in Thrissur district, was living in Chennai. The two others in the team are Safwan P., who is from Tirur in Malappuram district, and V. Jasim Nageelan Kandiyil, Ramshad’s cousin, who’s also from Kuttiady. From Kanakamala, they were taken to the Armed Reserve Police Camp in Kozhikode for preliminary questioning and after registering the case, to the NIA office in Kochi, says the aforementioned police officer. An NIA court later sent them to police custody.

Shock and disbelief

“We visited him in Kochi,” says Hasina, Manseed’s mother. “He asked us not to believe what appears in the media and stay strong.” Other parents also share the same views. Abdullah N.K., father of Jasim, said he never noticed anything amiss about his son. Jasim is a B.Tech student in Bengaluru who usually comes home during the weekends. On September 30, Friday, he was home, and on Sunday, he told the family that he’s going to Vadakara, a municipality town in Kozhikode district, for a friend’s party. “He didn’t tell us anything about the Kanakamala meeting. We don’t even know who this Manseed is. He just said it’s a party and that he’ll be back by the evening, but in the evening we got to know that he was arrested,” says Abdullah, standing in front of his two-storey house in Kuttiady. Dressed in white mundu and shirt, Abdullah, a short man with a neatly trimmed white beard, speaks in a soft voice that’s barely audible, his hands trembling as he speaks. “We believe Jasim and Ramshad are innocent. We have approached an advocate. But if they are proven guilty, they deserve to be punished. Because Islam is a religion of peace. We are peace-loving people. IS has nothing to do with Islam,” he says.

Fassil, a childhood friend of both Jasim and Ramshad, says he was shocked when he heard that they were arrested. “I have known them for many years and I have never noticed anything unusual about them. It was difficult to believe that they were arrested on charges of terror,” says Fassil, who works in a shop in Kuttiady.

The cousins don’t have any criminal background either. T. Sajeevan, Circle Inspector of Kuttiady, says there was no case registered against them and that the local police had not noticed any terror-linked activities in the area earlier. But intelligence officials claim otherwise. “We have a dedicated cyber team to monitor suspicious online activities. This group fell under the radar a year ago and since then we began closely watching their discussions. It’s only after we got credible information that they are meeting in Kannur that we got the NIA involved to arrest them,” says an intelligence official.

Four days after the Kanakamala incident, the NIA arrested Subahani Haja Moideen from Tirunelveli in Tamil Nadu. Originally from Thodupuzha, Idukki district in Kerala, Moideen had got military training at IS camps in Syria and Iraq, claims the NIA. The intelligence official says Moideen was also part of the online groups of the IS and in touch with the youth held from Kanakamala.

Some family members and co-workers of the arrested agree that they were involved in IS-related online groups and discussions. Haris Ali, younger brother of Abu Basheer who hails from Coimbatore, says his brother was a member of a Facebook group and a Telegram channel that discussed IS-related issues. “But he was only a passive member. We don’t believe he was in any way involved in extremist activities,” Ali says. Like others in the Kanakamala team, Basheer told the family on October 1 that he’s going to Kerala for a programme; they came to know about the arrest only when NIA sleuths landed in their house at 8 p.m. the next day for searches.

Social media propaganda

K.H. Nazer, State secretary of the Popular Front of India (PFI), a hard-line Muslim organisation, says there are dangerous propaganda groups and pages on social media. One of the arrested youth from Kanakamala, the 30-year-old Safwan, was a member of the PFI and working as a graphic designer atThejas, the Malayalam newspaper run by the organisation.

PFI members have been involved in a number of cases related to violence, of which the most sensational was a professor’s hand being chopped off in July 2010 in Muvattupuzha near Ernakulam for “insulting the prophet Muhammad” in an examination paper. Thirteen PFI activists were found guilty in the case. But Nazer says the PFI is in the forefront of the campaign against the IS, and had warned its members to stay away from IS-related online groups. “We expelled Safwan from the PFI after the arrest. There are concerns in the organisation that he was involved in some social media discussions on the IS. We find it a breach of organisational discipline,” Nazer says. Thejas has also suspended Safwan from his job after the arrest.

There are a number of Facebook pages and accounts that propagate the IS’s messages in Malayalam. There was a Malayalam blog, Muhajir, that had at least 40 articles on issues such as the life in ‘Caliphate’ (in Syria and Iraq) and the “responsibility” of Muslims to fight for ‘Caliph’ Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the IS. Wordpress took the blog down after complaints from Indian security agencies. It reappeared last month as muhajiraun2016, but vanished again after the Kanakamala arrest. Ashabul Haqq is a Facebook page which also has pro-IS posts. One article on the page says it’s obligatory for Muslims to go to the ‘Caliphate’. Another one slams Muslim organisations in Kerala for not taking up arms and fighting the “opponents of true religion”. Yet another post, titled “Shed a Kafir’s blood”, says “unless there’s no peace agreement with Muslims, a Kafir’s (non-Muslim) life and property won’t be protected”. Yunus Saleem, Amir Ali, Abdullah Ibn Abdullah are some other Facebook accounts that have declared loyalty to Baghdadi and spread IS propaganda in Malayalam.

Even when Muslim youth went missing from Kasaragod and Palakkad districts of Kerala a few months ago, investigation agencies and Muslim organisations had claimed that they were drawn to extreme ideas through online groups. The IS has over the years built an online ecosystem to draw people into its fold and inspire others to carry out terror attacks, from around the world. The number of Indians believed to have joined the IS ranks is low compared with other nationalities. According to a December 2015 report by The Soufan Group, a U.S.-based private intelligence company, some 40-50 Indians are expected to have joined the IS in Iraq and Syria, compared to 330 from Pakistan and 250 from the United States. “The number of people getting inspired by these extremist ideas may be very few. But still, it’s happening among a few Muslim youth. We can’t live in denial,” says N. Ali Abdullah, secretary, Kerala Muslim Jamaath, the mass organisation of the “A.P. Sunni” faction led by Kanthapuram A.P. Aboobacker Musliyar.

Innocent or guilty?

The NIA has so far arrested at least 25 Indians only in south India for alleged IS connections. In June this year, the agency arrested 11 people from Hyderabad and later let off four of them as there was no evidence. The Kanakamala incident is the latest crackdown on “IS-linked modules”. Asked if the NIA version would sustain in court, Kaleeswaram Raj, an advocate practising in the Supreme Court, says, “In general, when the UAPA [Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act] is invoked, the judiciary takes it very seriously since national security is involved. The accused will be put under stringent judicial scrutiny,” adding, “but we should also keep in mind that it’s a draconian law. And draconian laws such as TADA [Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act], POTA (Prevention of Terrorism Act) or UAPA have a history of being misused and several individuals in the past have been victimised.”

“We can’t just accept the police version as it is,” says P. Koya, editor-in-chief of Thejas, “We have seen police cases related to terror crumble in the court several times in the past. We should wait till the court finds them guilty before arriving at a judgment on the accused.”

Reasons for radicalisation

But for the Muslim organisations in Kerala, the real problem lies beyond this specific case. “Why is that the youth are being attracted to these extreme ideas? Because they don’t learn what real Islam is. They don’t understand the message of mercy and forgiveness which the Prophet showed,” says Ali Abdullah, who’s also the managing editor of Siraj, the Malayalam newspaper of the AP Sunni faction. Sitting in the dimly lit air-conditioned conference room in the ground floor of the Samastha Islamic Centre, the Kozhikode office of the AP Sunni faction, Ali Abdullah speaks of the virtues of Islam and the dangers of radicalisation that Muslim youth face. “Those who got arrested, or those who get inspired by IS-like ideologies, may not have any direct link with any of the organisations here. But clearly there are ideological links between these youngsters and Salafi groups and political Islamists such as Jamaat-e-Islami [Hind],” he says.

Salafism is a conservative reform movement within Sunni Islam which urges its followers to emulate Prophet Muhammad and his earliest followers. The Mujahid movement in Kerala, spearheaded by Kerala Nadvathul Mujahideen, is a Salafi movement. Jamaat-e-Islami, on the other side, is a political Islamist organisation founded by Pakistani religious scholar and Imam Maulana Ala Maududi.

There’s little consensus among Kerala’s Muslim organisations on the cause for radicalisation. The conventional sociological theory that poverty and lack of education breed extremism has been called into question by the recent cases. The people who went missing from Kasaragod and Palakkad are highly educated and hail from well-off families. Those arrested from Kanakamala are also from middle-class families. In an earlier interview, O. Abdurahman, editor of Madhyamam, the newspaper run by the Jamaat-e-Islami, said the problem is the textual interpretation of Islam which Salafis do. But there’s a large spectrum of people, from Ali Abdullah of the AP Sunni faction to K.M. Shaji, an MLA of the Indian Union Muslim League, the largest Muslim political party in Kerala which has the backing of the E.K. Sunni faction, who believe Jamaat-e-Islami’s “extremist” ideals are also influencing the youth negatively.

Asked if there’s an alarming trend of radicalisation among the Muslim youth, Shaji says that’s not the case. “But at the same time, the community has to remain vigilant. There is extremism. It can’t be called spiritual extremism as there’s no extremism in spirituality. The problem is imbibing religion madly,” he says. “This problem can’t be solved by the government and investigating agencies alone. Only responsible Muslim organisations can address the real issue of radicalisation,” he adds.

With Ananth M.K. in Coimbatore and Marri Ramu in Hyderabad.

Keywords: Islamic State, Kerala, National Investigation Agency, Kanakamala, Manseed, Kerala’s Muslim organisations, radicalisation, Muslim youth

Source: The Hindu, 22-10-2016

Kairana and the politics of exclusion

The National Human Rights Commission’s report on the ‘Kairana exodus’ raises questions about its remit as an unbiased arbiter in conflict situations

For over three years now communal politics has been on the upswing in Uttar Pradesh. With Assembly elections due in early 2017, the communal pot has been stirred up again in this crucial State. Ever since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power at the Centre, polarisation on issues such as ‘love jihad’, ‘ghar wapsi’ and the beef ban have become a regular feature of political mobilisation in Uttar Pradesh and the country at large. The urge to engage in a politics of polarisation must be understood in the context of the Muzaffarnagar violence of 2013, which worked to the party’s benefit in the 2014 Lok Sabha election. Its impact can be seen from the fact that BJP leaders who were implicated in the violence were given tickets and they won their seats with large margins. For the first time, not a single Muslim candidate was elected to Parliament from the State even though Muslims constitute over 19 per cent of its population and over 30 per cent of the population in quite a few districts of western Uttar Pradesh.

The claim of an exodus

In June, the BJP’s Lok Sabha Member of Parliament Hukum Singh released a list of 346 members of Hindu families that had allegedly fled Kairana town in Shamli district of western Uttar Pradesh due to persecution and pressure fearing atrocities at the hands of Muslim criminals and extortionists. (The chief complainant is an accused in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar violence.) BJP President Amit Shah called the allegations of a Hindu exodus an ‘eye opener’ at a public rally in Allahabad, and he later cautioned that “UP should not take Kairana lightly”. Aligarh’s BJP MP Satish Gautam declared that there is a need to find out about “other Kairanas”. It is clear from these statements that the ruling party is not averse to using the issue as a plank for political mobilisation even though it could aggravate social tensions in the region.

However, the forced exodus claim was denied by the State government and the district administration. Several investigative reports by the media, notably in The Hindu, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times and Quint, also exposed these claims. They found it to be exaggerated and false as many of the people had migrated for various reasons and some had done so in search of better opportunities. In short, the Kairana exodus was dismissed as a non-event until it was revived by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). In response to a complaint filed by Monika Arora, a Supreme Court advocate, and a vocal and active member of the BJP, the commission constituted a team from its Investigation Division to look into the complaints of exodus of Hindu families from Kairana due to fear of criminals.

A ‘partisan report’

The NHRC report released on September 21 observed that these allegations are ‘serious’ and that several Hindu families have migrated because of the worsening law and order situation after victims of the Muzaffarnagar riots settled there. It stated that: “In 2013, the post-rehabilitation scenario resulting in resettlement of about 25/30 thousand members of Muslim community in Kairana Town from district Muzaffarnagar, UP, the demography of Kairana town has changed in favour of the Muslim Community becoming the more dominating and majority community. Most of the witnesses examined and victims feel that the rehabilitation in 2013 has permanently changed the social situation in Kairana town and has led to further deterioration of law and order situation.”

The report came to this conclusion on the basis of verification of six victims/persons and telephonic verification of members of four displaced families in three randomly selected residential localities, which makes it a total of 10 out of the 346 cases of migration from Kairana for reasons of insecurity.

Overall, the NHRC report provides no substantive authentication of its controversial findings; furthermore, it provides no details of the total number of families who migrated from Kairana, the specific time frame for when these families left and the exact reasons behind their decision to do so. The five-page report comprises brief statements on the criminal incidents given by select witnesses. There is no evidence in the report that these crimes were committed by displaced people who had settled in Kairana, even though the report asserts that the presence of Muzaffarnagar riot victims has changed the demography of Kairana and this has led to a further deterioration of law and order in the town. This is a conjecture, not a fact; there is no factual evidence to establish a connection between the presence of internally displaced persons and the increase in incidents of crime mentioned in the report. In any case, there is no corroboration to back the figure of 25-30,000 Muslim victims having settled in the town.

The impression conveyed by the report that only members of the majority community are impacted by the faltering law and order situation in western Uttar Pradesh is deeply flawed. The attempt to paint a largely criminal phenomenon with a broad communal brush without citing any independent and credible evidence is surprising from an institution mandated to investigate human rights violations. Sure enough, the labelling and stigmatising of the minority community in this manner has dismayed civil society activists and victims of the Muzaffarnagar violence who have demanded a withdrawal of the ‘partisan and prejudiced’ report. Social activist Farah Naqvi, who has been working for the rehabilitation of the people displaced by the Muzaffarnagar riots since 2013, called the NHRC report nothing more than “communal rumour-mongering”.

It doubles victimisation

The 2013 communal violence had initially displaced over 75,000 people. A 2016 report,Living Apart: Communal Violence and Forced Displacement in Muzaffarnagar and Shamli, based on detailed ground-level research done by the non-governmental organisations Aman Biradari and Afkar India, found 50,000 people still scattered all over Muzaffarnagar, Shamli and other districts, of whom nearly 30,000 victims were in 65 internally displaced people colonies. According to the report, 270 families (approximately 2,000 people) had settled in Kairana. It found that even after three years, riot victims are living in ghetto-like resettlement colonies with little support from the State administration. It further notes that the Uttar Pradesh administration not only failed to rehabilitate riot victims displaced from their homes and villages, it also actively encouraged Muslim refugees, who used to live in Hindu majority villages, to resettle in Muslim-majority colonies, thus escalating the social divide.

Curiously, the large-scale displacement caused by communal violence in 2013 did not lead to any investigation or recommendations by the NHRC. But the Commission saw it fit to investigate the exodus of 346 people, and what’s more, recommend the formation of a high-level committee of the Government of U.P. “to meet each of the displaced families from Kairana Town now living in districts Dehradun, Panipat, Muzaffarnagar, Roorki, Karnal, etc. of Uttarakhand and Haryana in order to redress their grievances and facilitate their return to Kairana, if so desired…” It did not make the same proposals for the rehabilitation of over 75,000 people displaced from Muzaffarnagar in 2013.

Even though communal mobilisation and internal displacement is a process that still continues in many parts of western Uttar Pradesh, it finds no mention in the NHRC report. It is mentioned only in relation to the displacement from Kairana for which the NHRC blames those who are themselves displaced by communal violence. In so doing, it displays a complete lack of sympathy for people who have been affected and displaced by violence. Rather than supporting them, what the report has in effect done is to double their victimisation by tagging them as people whose presence “has led to further deterioration of law and order situation”.

Damaging a shining legacy

The NHRC has played a critical role in investigating violations of human rights in the country. ‘In 2002, the Commission, under former Chief Justice J.S. Verma, was the first public body to visit Gujarat after the riots, and it subsequently moved the Supreme Court to transfer cases outside the State to secure a fair trial’. This legacy creates unparalleled social expectations but it also invites civil society scrutiny from national and international actors for any potentially detrimental action by the apex body. Its neutrality is critically important because that is what gives its reports and decisions credibility as a record of ground reality, without serving any person or party’s interest. Its impartiality has been undermined by the decision to investigate an exodus list supplied by a political party with a clear stake in upping the communal ante ahead of the Uttar Pradesh elections. In the event, the report vindicated the ruling party’s claims but it compromised its own autonomy and non-aligned status. This is an inevitable consequence of interpreting broader societal trends like migration and security through a communal prism, which sets a perilous precedent of giving an ethnic colour to law and order problems.

The idea of the NHRC as an unbiased arbiter in conflict situations is widely perceived as essential to the promotion and protection of human rights in our democracy. As an icon of independence, the legitimacy and credibility of the NHRC or of any human rights body rest on its ability to address the problems relating to human rights in a society generally, and not those of a particular community. The public needs to have the confidence that the Commission will investigate cases of rights violation without fear or favour. Hence, the effectiveness of human rights commissions depends on how a particular commission locates itself in a society and is able to confront the issues before it. Majoritarianism is a real issue in India today. It has led to legitimate fears about this creed dictating policy and compromising the functioning of public institutions; in this scenario, it is the responsibility of rights watchdog institutions to prevent this tendency from dominating institutions. For a democracy to thrive, institutions like the NHRC have to play a counter-majoritarian role.

Zoya Hasan is Professor Emerita, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Keywords: Kairana exodus, politics of exclusion, National Human Rights Commission

Source: The Hindu, 17-10-2016

Sixteen years of solitude

She has not let anyone down. The people of India have let down Irom Sharmila

As she licked honey from a fingertip, she could not hold back her tears. It was the first time in 16 years that any food or water had entered Irom Sharmila’s mouth. This tiny dab of honey ended the most extraordinary non-violent battle against injustice that India has seen in the last half-century.

The premise of Gandhi’s satyagraha is to resist oppression by causing suffering not to one’s oppressor, but to oneself.

No one has chosen to voluntarily suffer as much and as long as Irom Sharmila in the pursuit of what she describes as “non-violence with love”, an instrument of battle she learnt from her “idol”, Gandhi. Gandhi believed, as does Irom Sharmila, that if one chose to suffer, this act of non-violence with love would awaken the conscience of the oppressor, and ultimately spur a change of heart.

The suffering that Sharmila chose to impose on herself was to refuse even a morsel of food or a drop of water for 16 long years. She continued to live only because the police and doctors force-fed her through a plastic tube. Her body organs degenerated irreversibly; her menstrual periods halted. The tube through which she was forcefully fed was continuously painful. To add to her suffering, the law of the land criminalised her protest as “attempted suicide”. She was incarcerated in a high security hospital ward in Imphal. The maximum penalty for the crime of attempting suicide is imprisonment for one year. Each year when she completed her solitary incarceration, she was released and immediately re-arrested.

The greater part of these 16 years she spent alone. In a rare interview, she admitted that what she missed most desperately was simply being with people. I met her once at the hospital ward and this is what she said to me. She missed talking to people other than her police guards and nurses, she missed friends, she missed being with someone she had come to love. She did not meet her mother even once these 16 years: Her pact with her unlettered mother was that they would see each other only after she achieved her political goal.

She chose to endure all of this as an act of political resistance through non-violent self-suffering that is unparalleled in the world. Her resolve was that she would not eat or drink until the government of India withdrew the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 from the state of Manipur, which she believed had enabled men in uniform to rape, abduct and kill civilians with impunity. The law was enacted in 1958 with the official objective of enabling Indian security forces to more effectively quell armed rebellion in Nagaland. The law permits security personnel to fire at and even kill civilians, and arrest, enter and search any premises without warrant. It was extended to Manipur in 1980. The impunity which the law extends to the men in khaki and olive green has indeed resulted in a long and shameful trail of extra-judicial killings (which continue even today), forced disappearances, rape, torture and extortion.

On November 1 2000, the paramilitary Assam Rifles gunned down 10 innocent civilians awaiting a bus in the town Malom in the Manipur valley. These included a teenage boy and an old woman. The gruesome pictures of their bodies riddled with bullets filled the next day’s newspapers. Among those who saw these was Sharmila, then a 28-year-old rights activist, journalist and poet. The Assam Rifles claimed that its soldiers were defending themselves from a bomb attack on their convoy, and the civilians were killed in cross-fire. The incensed people in the valley were unconvinced, and demanded an independent magisterial enquiry. This was not allowed because the Assam Rifles was protected by their right to open fire under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. Sharmila then made a quiet resolve that she must fight to free her people from the oppression of this law. She would use her own body as her weapon. There was no other way for her. She took the blessings of her mother and quietly began her fast on November 4, 2000.

Sixteen years later, the law persists, unchanged. There is little evidence that this indomitable young woman’s extraordinary, even superhuman, self-imposed suffering has touched any hearts in India’s political establishment. The government of India appointed in 2004 a commission headed by a former Supreme Court judge, Jeevan Reddy, to enquire whether the law needed to be amended or repealed in order to conform to the government’s obligations to human rights. The commission in 2005 recommended repeal of the law (even as it suggested that many of its provisions be incorporated in other laws). But successive governments of India chose to not act in accordance even with the commission’s conservative counsel.

Sharmila, ever since she launched on her epic fast, became a symbol of resistance and courage for the people of the troubled valley. Since 2008, every day some seven to 10 women fasted from sunrise to sundown in solidarity with Sharmila. I met the silver-haired matrons who ran this protest in a tent in Imphal city. They rarely returned home to their children and grandchildren, and slept in the tent. They felt a larger purpose in organising this unbroken chain of solidarity with their heroine Sharmila, and her struggle for peace and justice in their homeland.

Today many of these women feel profoundly let down by Sharmila’s decision to withdraw her 16 year-old fast. I hope desperately that they relent and open their hearts to accept the decision of their heroine to fight against AFSPA through the ballot instead of fasting. To recognise that although Sharmila is one of the tallest living Indians for her voluntary choice of incredible self-suffering of 16 years, she is still human. That she has not let them down; it is the political and security establishments, but ultimately the people of India, who have let down Irom Sharmila

From her lonely hospital ward, she wrote: Free my feet from the shackles/ Like bangles made of thorn/ Confined inside a narrow room/ My fault lies in being incarcerated Like a bird…Let us celebrate that Sharmila can at last taste food again, and quench her thirst with water which pours down her throat. That she walks free at last. But remember that the battle she fought for the people of Manipur for a peace founded on justice and the dignity of democratic freedoms is still to be won. May we stand with her and the people of Manipur in that battle. Let Irom Sharmila’s suffering not be in vain.

Mander is a human rights worker and writer.

Source; Indian Express, 11-08-2016

A question of human rights

In the debate on abortion, let us not lose sight of the basic right of women: the right to autonomy and to decide what to do with their own bodies.

We are a group of persons from across the country working with women over several decades around issues of their rights and health. In response to the article,“A tricky debate on abortion” (Aug. 3, 2016), we would like to contest from the perspective of women’s rights the arguments made by the author.

Worldwide, it is estimated that 46 million women seek abortion every year and the World Health Organisation estimates that close to half of these happen in unsafe conditions. In India, around 20 million women seek to terminate an unwanted pregnancy every year. Even today, due to the stigma around women’s sexuality and abortion itself, a woman dies every two hours of an unsafe abortion. What makes this statistic even more tragic is that in our country, as the article points out, we have had a law permitting abortion access under certain conditions since 1971; however, this has not ensured widespread access to safe abortion services.

Right to bodily integrity

This is one of the reasons that over the last three decades, international human rights bodies, including those of the UN, have paid attention to the issue of abortion and have called upon states to remove barriers to access to safe abortion. Internationally accepted human rights law supports the right to choose whether to continue a pregnancy or not within the framework of the right to life, right to health, and right to autonomy and bodily integrity. There is enough evidence that non-availability of safe abortion kills — where abortion laws are not restrictive, morbidity and mortality due to unsafe abortion are much lower.

A woman’s decision to terminate a pregnancy is not a frivolous one. Abortion is often the only way out of a very difficult situation — pregnancy resulting from coerced or non-consensual sex, ignorance that pregnancy may result even from the first sexual intercourse, inability to use a method of contraception due to a husband’s (or other’s) objection, fear of side effects, not receiving information and counselling at the appropriate time, wrong use of methods, discontinuities in use because of various reasons including not receiving supplies regularly, and, of course, method failure. An abortion is a carefully considered decision taken by a woman who fears that the welfare of the children she already has, and of other members of the household that she is obliged to care for with limited financial and other resources, may be compromised by the birth of another child. These are decisions taken by responsible women who have few other options; they are women who would ideally have preferred to prevent an unwanted pregnancy, but are unable to do so. We have reported this in the many studies published by us. And if the pregnancy was the result of sexual violence and the woman does not want to continue with the pregnancy, then forcing her to do so represents a violation of the woman’s bodily integrity and aggravates her mental trauma, impeding her healing and recovery from violence.

The question of ethics

The article refers to “strong ethical objections to abortion per se”. It is worth mentioning here that abortion is permitted for social or economic reasons in 80 per cent of developed countries, as compared with only 16 per cent of developing countries. According to international human rights law, a person is vested with human rights only at birth; an unborn foetus is not an entity with human rights. The ethical issues here are not just of the rights of the foetus. The foetus is not an independent entity and depends completely on the welfare of the woman. Without her well-being, one cannot talk about the well-being of the foetus. We also need to consider the fact that the woman herself is a living human being in the here and now — the pregnancy takes place within her body and has profound effects on her health, mental well-being and life. Thus, how she wants to deal with this pregnancy must be a decision she and she alone can make.

The article also juxtaposes women’s choice to continue or terminate a pregnancy with the right of a disabled person to live. We would like to present the grim reality that adult women and young girls face when they are pregnant against their wishes or when a wanted pregnancy can become difficult to continue if the foetus is diagnosed as having serious abnormalities. The state does not offer any special relief for parents of disabled children and the entire burden of medical care, education, daily care and future security falls on the individuals alone. It is also not true that most serious foetal abnormalities can be diagnosed before 20 weeks — abortion for serious foetal anomaly often is needed after 20 weeks as tests are mostly done at 18 weeks and results can take three or more weeks.

We would like to state that upholding the rights of the disabled does not conflict with upholding women’s reproductive rights. Many disability rights activists are pro-abortion rights and those who uphold reproductive rights are also supportive of the rights of persons with disability to make reproductive choices, to not have to face coerced sterilisation and/or abortion.

A basic right

Perhaps the time has come for us to discuss whether women in India are indeed equal citizens and whether the right to control their own body and fertility and motherhood choices are primary to their empowerment. The judiciary and lawmakers need to maintain a secular outlook and strive to ensure that the women citizens of this country have equal citizenship rights in consonance with the Constitution and with accepted international covenants on human rights. These include a right to life for the woman, as also a right to dignity and a right to benefit from scientific progress. Religion and other traditional frameworks are inherently imbued with patriarchy and cannot be used by a secular state to direct its laws and policies.

Let us not lose sight of the basic right of women: the right to autonomy and to decide what to do with their own bodies, including whether or not to get pregnant and stay pregnant.

Suchitra Dalvie, Sundari Ravindran, Subha Sri B., Renu Khanna (CommonHealth); Jashodhara Dasgupta (National Alliance for Maternal Health and Human Rights); Sana Contractor (Centre for Health and Social Justice); Rupsa Mallik (CREA); Padma Deosthali (CEHAT); Sarojini N., Deepa V. (SAMA).

Keywords: Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act, abortions, Federation of Obstetric and Gynaecological Societies of India, Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1971

Source: The Hindu, 11-08-2016

Irom Sharmila, Enrich Indian Democracy





Irom Sharmila is 44 years old. For around 37% of her life, she has not had a proper meal. She does not have a home, where she can cook, read, move around, have a family . She lives in jail in Imphal, Manipur, which is politely called a `special ward', where she is force-fed, nasally: the authorities do not want the public outrage and rebellion that Gandhi threatened to materialise, with his fasts during the freedom struggle, without any mechanism for force-feeding. Sharmila is a cult today . Many profit from cults. But now, she will enter electoral politics.From exerting moral pressure on the state at one remove, she will move to exerting pressure on the state directly . Of course, Sharmila will win any poll. But for which organisation? Eve ry regime in India has let Manipur and the northeast down. There will be plenty of `welfare' leeches hounding her, whose fortunes have been created from her mi sery. She will be a heroine in electoral battle, a winner, but a lonely one -unless she joins hands with the larger struggle across India for full realisation of democracy , which remains a promise yet not redeemed for millions of people in India.
Sharmila decided to do what she did in November 2000. On the 2nd of the month, military shot 10 (some accounts say 12) people dead at a bus stop in Malom, a suburb of Itanagar. Why this Malom `massacre' happened is still a mystery: the official version refers to a grenade attack. Most people, including Sharmila, laugh at this. The military shot dead many , young and old. At least 42 were thrashed. Sharmila asked, why . And did the classic act of civil disobedience, which has gone on for almost 16 years. In diminutive Desmond Coutinho, who wrote to her and sent stuff to read, she found love. Her new turn to take direct part in politics can only enrich Indian democracy .

Source: Economic Times, 28-07-2016

Manipur’s ‘Iron Lady’ Irom Sharmila to end 16-year fast, fight elections, marry

Irom Sharmila, whose 16-year hunger strike thrust rights abuses by Indian armed forces into public imagination, is set to end her fast, contest elections and, if everything goes to plan, also marry her Goan-British boyfriend.

The 43-year-old has been campaigning to scrap a law that shields troops from prosecution, but on Tuesday she said her struggle had been lonely and unfruitful. This left her with little choice but to “change my approach as I want to see success”.

“In my 16 year of journey, I see no visible change except the routine detention,” said Sharmila, speaking with her nose tube on that the authorities have used for years to force-feed her a sludgy mix of nutrients.

She told reporters that she would eat again on August 9 -- ending probably what is the world’s longest hunger strike -- and contest assembly polls due next year as an independent candidate.

Sharmila stopped eating and drinking in 2000 after allegedly witnessing the army kill 10 people at a bus stop near her home in Manipur, which is subject to the controversial law that gives Indian forces sweeping powers to search, enter property and shoot on sight.

“My fight so far has been all alone and so I have decided to wage a war against the Act democratically by becoming a lawmaker instead of continuing with my fast,” she told reporters, referring to the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA).

From the days of Mahatma Gandhi to the more recent anti-corruption protests of Anna Hazare, India has a long history of activists using hunger strikes as a tool of protest. But Sharmila’s fast caught global attention for its sheer duration.

Almost immediately after she began her fast she was arrested under a law that makes attempting suicide a crime, leading Amnesty International to call her a “prisoner of conscience”.

She has been confined to a hospital ward in Manipur’s capital, Imphal, and is force-fed via a plastic nasal drip several times a day.

The controversial law, which traces its origins to a British-era ordinance used to suppress the Quit India Movement of 1942, is blamed by human rights groups for illegal killings and arbitrary detentions by security forces. The military denies misusing the law.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court dealt a blow to the army’s immunity under a the law, saying it can’t use “excessive or retaliatory force” even in troubled places, and agreed to an investigation into hundreds of alleged illegal killings by security forces in Manipur.

Some of Sharmila’s aides said her decision to call off her fast might have been influenced by her boyfriend, who is also an activist. She told a court, where she appeared on Tuesday in connection with her attempted suicide case, that she would like to marry.

Sharmila’s brother, Singhajit, said her family backed her new fight.

“Whatever she does we will support her as a family. Even our mother is hoping for the day when the act is abolished and Sharmila wins the cause she has been fighting for,” Singhajit, who uses one name, said.

Source: Hindustan Times, 27-07-2016

An agenda for humanity

We face the worst humanitarian crisis since WW II and the largest funding crisis.

More people desperately need humanitarian assistance than at any time since the founding of the United Nations. More warring parties are brazenly violating international humanitarian law. More resources than ever are needed to meet sharply escalating humanitarian needs. Yet we face the largest-ever funding shortfalls.

For these reasons and more, I am convening the first-ever World Humanitarian Summit in May in Istanbul. I am urging global leaders, international organisations and others to commit to deliver more and better for those in greatest need. There is no time to lose.

Climate change is affecting lives and livelihoods across our fragile planet. Brutal and seemingly intractable conflicts, violent extremism, transnational crime and growing inequality are devastating the lives of millions of men, women and children and are destabilising entire regions. More people have been forced to flee their homes than at any time since World War II.

Around the world, more than 125 million people need humanitarian assistance. If they were all in one country, it would be the 11th largest nation on Earth, and one of the fastest growing.

Today’s complex challenges cross borders. No single country or organisation can address them alone. We need to restore trust in the ability of our national, regional and international institutions to confront these challenges.

A sense of shared humanity must shape our politics and drive financial decisions. In advance of the Summit, I have set out an Agenda for Humanity as a framework for action, change and mutual accountability. It has five core responsibilities.

First, leaders must intensify efforts to find political solutions to prevent and end conflict. The enormous human and economic cost makes conflict the biggest obstacle to human development. We must move from managing crises to preventing them.

Second, countries must uphold the norms that safeguard humanity. This means complying with international humanitarian and human rights law, and stopping the bombing and shelling of civilian targets and areas. It also means committing to national and international justice and ending impunity.

Third, we must leave no one behind — and we must reach those who are furthest behind, first. This means transforming the lives of
the most vulnerable, including those living in conflict and in chronic poverty, and those living with the risk of natural hazards and rising sea levels. We must reduce forced displacement, provide more regular and lawful opportunities for migration, empower women and girls and ensure quality education for all. We cannot meet the Sustainable Development Goals, agreed by world leaders last September, if we do not reach these people.

The fourth core responsibility is to move from delivering aid to ending need. We need to close the humanitarian-development divide for good. We must also anticipate crises, not wait for them to happen. We must strengthen local leadership and capacity, reduce vulnerability, and increase the resilience of people and communities, who will always be the first and last responders in crises.

Fifth, we must find smart and innovative ways of mobilising funds. This will require diversifying and expanding the resource base and using a wider variety of financing tools. I have proposed a new international financing platform with the World Bank to identify mechanisms to finance our response to protracted crises.

The Agenda for Humanity provides key actions and strategic shifts which the world requires to reduce humanitarian needs
and contribute to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. I urge world leaders to come to the World Humanitarian Summit committed to promote sustainable human progress and a life of dignity and security for all.

The writer is secretary-general of the United Nations

Source: Indian Express, 3-02-2016

Human rights under attack more than ever: Highlights of Amnesty report

At least 30 countries illegally forced refugees to return to places where they would be in danger last year, Amnesty said on Wednesday as it warned that many governments were brazenly breaking international law.

War crimes or other violations of the “laws of war” were committed by governments or armed groups in at least 19 countries, Amnesty said in its annual review of human rights around the world.

Amnesty Secretary General Salil Shetty said that short-term national self-interest and draconian security crackdowns had led to an “unprecedented assault on human rights” in 2015.

“Your rights are in jeopardy: they are being treated with utter contempt by many governments around the world,” he said.

One of the most egregious examples of countries turning their backs on asylum seekers took place when human traffickers left thousands of people from Myanmar and Bangladesh adrift on the open seas without food and water.

Hundreds are thought to have died from thirst and hunger as countries in the region played “ping-pong in the sea” with them, Amnesty said.

In Europe, the report strongly criticised Hungary for sealing its borders to keep out thousands of desperate refugees and obstructing collective regional attempts to help them.

More than 1 million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe last year, many fleeing war zones. Amnesty said that, with the exception of Germany, the response to the crisis had been woeful.

“That Europe, which is the richest bloc in the world, is not able to take care of the basic rights of some of the most persecuted people in the world is shameful,” Shetty said.

He called for the world to find legal and dignified ways for refugees to reach safety and said 1.2 million of them must be resettled without delay.

Around half the arrivals in Europe last year were from Syria, which Shetty described as a “human rights-free zone”.

Amnesty condemned the killing in Syria of thousands of civilians in direct and indiscriminate attacks with barrel bombs and other weaponry and criticised lengthy sieges of civilian areas and the blocking of international aid to starving people.

It also said Saudi Arabia had committed war crimes in the bombing campaign it had led in Yemen and criticised it for obstructing the establishment of a U.N.-led inquiry into violations by all sides in the conflict.

“HIGH STAKES”

Shetty warned that not only human rights, but also the laws and institutions meant to protect them, were under attack.

Many African countries have threatened to walk out of the International Criminal Court, which was set up to end impunity for leaders who commit war crimes.

Countries hampering cooperation with the ICC include Kenya, Ivory Coast and South Africa, which ignored a court order last year to arrest Sudan’s president.

Shetty also said too many governments were using the threat of violence from armed groups as an excuse to “take short cuts on human rights”.

“The human rights of civilians cannot be sacrificed under some vague notions of combating terrorism,” he said.

“Human rights are a necessity, not an accessory ... the stakes for humankind have never been higher.”

Amnesty’s annual review, which includes reports from 160 countries and territories, said there had been some gains for human rights last year.

Three countries - Madagascar, Fiji and Suriname - abolished the death penalty in 2015, and Mongolia is set to do so in 2016. Other countries launched national campaigns to end child marriage or passed laws to recognise same-sex relationships.

Source: Hindustan Times, 24-02-2016

Rights abuse rampant in India: Amnesty

Kounteya Sinha

London:





Amnesty International has pulled up India, saying impunity is widespread for human rights abuses by state and non-state actors in the country .In its annual report, to be released on Wednesday, the global human rights watch dog has said state authorities often failed to prevent and at times committed crimes against children, women, dalits and adivasi (indigenous) people. Arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and extrajudicial executions often went unpunished, it has said.
A case in point was the arbitrary arrests and detentions of protesters and human rights defenders. National Human Rights Commission data indicated 123 illegal arrests and 203 cases of unlawful detention were reported from April to July 2014.
Amnesty has said “antiterror“ laws such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, which did not meet international human rights standards, were used. It has also criticized India for failing to clean up the contaminated factory site of the 1984 Bhopal gas tragedy . “Survivors continue to experience health problems linked to the leak and to pollution from the factory site,“ Amnesty has said.
The rights group has also brought to light the menace of extrajudicial executions. It has said proceedings contin ued before the Supreme Court relating to a petition seeking investigations into over 1,500 alleged “fake encounters“ -a term referring to staged extrajudicial executions -in Manipur. Courts in Delhi, Bihar and Punjab convicted police personnel of being involved in fake encounter killings.

Human Rights: Basic Issues

The government’s decision to set up a National Human Rights Commission is a significant indication of its being able to read the signs of the times. The Prime Minister has made the eloquent claim about his government’s commitment to upholding human rights: “We must send a clear message that we do not tolerate violation  of human rights.” He at the same time conceded that “there is need to identify the weaknesses, the gaps between pronouncements and action, and between legislation and its implementation”.

There is a veritable wave on the global plane today for the assertion of human rights. This is part of the democratic upsurge on a world scale. Long before the present groundswell for human rights in many parts of the world, it is worth recalling that our country has had a long tradition of struggle for human rights. Before independence, this was known as the movement for civil liberties. In fact, this was an offshoot of the freedom struggle, because one of the tenets of the Indian independence movement was that it never deviated in its commitment to democracy, and, therefore, its leaders upheld civil liberties.

In the thirties, Jawaharlal Nehru himself was once the President of the All India Civil Liberties’ Union. This was not a party outfit of the Congress—its separate identity was always respected just as it could attract many personalities of a liberal disposition who would not toe the Congress line at that time. The Civil Liberties’ Union survived after independence though its complexion was perceptibly changed by then; the ruling Congress establishment lapsed into inactivity, while the radical and Left critics of the government became more prominent in it, and only a handful of liberals who could keep their rapport with the radical activists, only they stayed on in the Civil Liberties’ Union. Chakkarai Chettiar, a grand old liberal from the South, was its last President, sometime about 1950-51. After that the organisation was hardly heard of, and it ceased to be even a letter-head organisation.

With the promulgation of the Constitution and the setting up of elected governments both at the Centre and the States, the impression went round that a civil liberties organisation would have little to do in the new democratic dispensation ushered  in by the new Constitution. This was not a very far-fetched impression, particularly in the first two decades after independence. There prevailed in the country what can be termed as the Nehru stamp on our political functioning, and this spread over the entire public life. Cases of repression were few and far between in that period.

The scenario changed to a large extent after that period. Roughly it was from the mid-sixties that one could discern a perceptible change. An important area of conflict could be identified in the rural sector. Roughly this was the period of the Green Revolution. Alongwith increased food production, the Green Revolution brought about a significant change in agrarian relations. The increased food production as a result of the new agricultural technique set by the Green Revolution was not evenly distributed. It was cornered by the rich farmer community who owned the land and had the means to exploit the new facilities offered by the intensive cultivation prescribed by the Green Revolution. At the other end, the poor  peasant and the agricultural labourer were reduced to the category of wage-earners. The old feudal relations were replaced by the more palpable class antagonism of the modern market. Clashes and tensions spread in many parts of the countryside.

This was the objective backdrop of the wave of militant activism in the rural sector, symbolised by what has come to be known as Naxalism. The rich farmer, more powerful than his effete zamindar predecessor, could afford to keep his armed gang in place of the old lathials, and the militant activist also resorted to the gun—inspired at the beginning by Mao’s teachings and clung on to them even when Maoism was dethroned on its native soil. It is worth recalling that about this time, a Union Home Ministry in-house survey of the new surge of armed conflicts in the countryside, delivered a very significant warning that the Green Revolution “might turn red”.

At the national political level, the scene had changed considerably by then. The old monolith of power that the Congress had been at the time of independence was broken. The party began to lose power in different parts of the country, and with the onset of the seventies, the party itself got split. Followed a new phase of lacerated politics, in which all sorts of permutations and combi-nations among political parties led to almost chronic instability. Regional parties got an opening and the entire political spectrum became a veritable mosaic of motley combinations.

The inexorable climax was reached by Indira Gandhi’s imposition of the Emergency, when democratic liberties were snuffed out and for the first time since independence, an authoritarian rule emerged in this country. The Emergency itself was the barometer of the political insecurity that gripped Indira Gandhi, and it meant the total suppression of all civil liberties. Human rights became an anathema for the new establishment.

The experience of the Emergency made large sections of public opinion aware of the need for a movement of civil liberties and democratic rights, and the collapse of the Emergency provided the necessary fillip for such a movement. That was how there came up immediately after the 1977 general elections, a whole host of organi-sations and initiatives among political workers, social activists, lawyers, journalists and among the youth which led to the formation of active human rights organisations in this country.

It was in this new awareness in concerned sections of the public, coupled with an alerted press, that many of the blatant violations of human rights got exposed. The exposure of the killing of activists in custody with the pretence of their being victims of encounters with the police got widespread publicity and in some cases even judicial strictures. The barbarous torture of suspects in police lock-up; the inhuman incarceration of undertrial prisoners for years, sometimes for decades; the infamous Bhagalpur blinding—all these and many other forms of atrocity, the climax reaching with the pogrom of the Sikh community in November 1984— all these could be highlighted in a systematic manner through the services of human rights organisations.

With the proliferation of social evils like dowry deaths, caste oppression and the revival of some of the superstitious practices, the role and responsi-bility of the human rights movements has grown tremendously in our country.

With the spread of violent confrontation between militant groups and the armed forces of the state involving largely police and paramolitary  forces apart from the Army at some places, new challenges confronted the human rights organi-sations. These armed confrontations have inter-national dimension as in the case of Kashmir and Punjab. Naturally, in such confrontations innocent people become the victim in many cases. This raises a very complex question before the human rights activists: should those who observe no human rights principles in dealing with their adversaries in open armed combat, be entitled to the protection of the human rights movement? In other words, should human rights be extended to those who in practice violate human rights in dealing with their adversaries?

This is a question which baffled many a society over the centuries. Much can be said in favour of it or in opposing it, and such debates can go on endlessly until the cattle come home.

There is the more fundamental question which has confronted many all over the world. In a society where there is blatant inequity, and a large section of the population is condemned, for no fault of their own, to a life of persecution and constant deprivation, would not any talk of defending human rights be reduced to a luxury of the rich and the powerful? The Black in the USA or South Africa, the Harijan in India, or the underdog in any of the developed societies—is he or she not entitled to the Right to be Human before one talks of human rights to them? But there is another way of looking at the same question: if human rights are enforced and democratic liberties ensured, that itself helps to a large measure the fight against social injustice.

One hopes that the National Human Rights Commission, when it is set up, will take up its mission with such basic issues in mind, and not reduce itself to a post office for complaints and grievances.