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Human rights & wrongs

Human rights & wrongs

Author: JK Dutt
Publication: The Statesman
Date: November 26, 2002

Before human rights activists cry foul, they need experience the conditions under which security personnel operate, says JK DUTT

Human rights appears to have assumed a one-sided and subjective face and is more often than not addressed by tackling the symptoms instead of the core disease. Hence some mulling over would be fruitful.

What is the exact composition of human rights vis-a-vis its definition? Let us discuss an arbitrary case. Does a rapist have any right to live? In India, a rapist is put behind bars for some time and then let off. A move to introduce the death penalty through summary trial for rapists was opposed by human rights groups and the move has since been shelved. In fact, the home minister went back on his word over this after agreeing to the proposal. The summation, thus, is that a rapist, having virtually destroyed the life of a victim, has every right to live life to the full while his unfortunate victim goes through "living death". How does one reconcile the human rights fitment in such a case?

Our armed forces, too, have been targeted. India's contentious zone in human rights is related to the functioning of our security personnel in Jammu and Kashmir, and North-east India while undertaking counter-insurgency operations. Amnesty International and its associates have repeatedly blamed our jawans for human rights abuses but have opted to keep mum about the same abuses perpetrated by insurgents on locals. The government on its part, has usually been quite receptive to the reports emanating from human rights organisations.

The history of human rights in the military sphere is educative. It was an incident during the Vietnam war in the late 1960s that made military psychologists sit up and take notice of a soldier's abnormal behaviour under battle conditions. A US army officer, Lieutenant William Calley, and his group of soldiers, under extreme provocation from the Vietcong, wiped out My Lai village. The incident caused an unprecedented hue and cry and Calley was court-martialled and dismissed from service. But his action spawned an awakening among psychiatrists and human behaviour watchers.

The principal point of consequent intense research and analysis was, "What makes a soldier behave in a highly abnormal manner? What forces him to bypass his disciplined self and do something abhorrent? Most of all, what should be done to prevent this kind of action by him?" The findings showed that the main reason for a soldier's abnormal behaviour in the field was a combination of his desire to survive in combat along with his self-induced responsibility for the safety of his mates. In fact, the American army encourages the "buddy profile" among its rank and file.

Analysts also argue that a soldier's battlefield idiosyncrasy in the realm of a hot war may be acceptable to society as an occupational hazard but his abnormal actions during a cold war situation, as in counter-insurgency operations, have not yet been effectively "managed". Further, no panacea has been found that could prevent such abnormalities. The debate continues.

An incisive point apropos the Indian scene is, how many human rights activists have actually experienced at first hand the root causes of a jawan's unnatural behaviour in the field by physically going out with army patrols to insurgent infested areas in Jammu and Kashmir and the North-east? Normally, these activists visit places under guided tours or pick up information from media channels. Surely this is not first hand? Expressing an opinion from an armchair based on hearsay or personal prejudices is far removed from assessing an incident resulting out of a close encounter with highly motivated insurgent sharpshooters and operators of remote controlled mines, something that an army patrol lives with 24 hours a day.

Let us discuss another example that occurs routinely in Jammu and Kashmir and the North-east. A security patrol while combing a locality comes under accurate fire from a house and suffers casualties. What should the patrol do? Generally, it has three choices: one, withdraw to a safe place and save itself from more casualties; two, destroy the house by distant firing; and three, raid the house in order to apprehend the culprits who in all probability would have fled by then. Would any human rights activist care to advise what specific steps the patrol should take in this case? Incidentally, Calley and his patrol found themselves in just such a situation at My Lai.

It is impossible for a detached person to appreciate a jawan's mental frame when he goes out on such patrols unless the observer accompanies him and experiences every moment of the mission. A recognised truism is that a soldier goes berserk when his mates are killed or wounded and rationality escapes him at that moment of time. I can confirm this truism as a veteran of two Indo-Pakistani wars. The point to note is, a third party rarely questions the soldier in a hot war context but demands an inquisition under cold war circumstances as prevalent in Jammu and Kashmir and the North-east. The soldier finds this perplexing and annoying. Our jawan has also come to realise another unpleasant fact: that he makes an appropriate scapegoat for society as the latter shy off from pilloring the actual villains - our politicians.

Earlier, Punjab too went through several years of the terrorism scourge together with its connected human rights issues amid huge adverse publicity. Yet the nation conveniently forgets that Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale was launched by our very politicians.

Human rights abuses in India are the fallout from faulty politico-socio-economic systems. India's Police Act for example, would have done us proud a century ago and the less said about our general legal provisions the better. A standard scenario is, the police catch a criminal and produce him in court only to find that he is out on bail thereafter, cocking a snook at them. Conscientious police officers are "punished" for doing their duty while politicians who mastermind massive human rights abuses as in Gujarat go scot free. After all, a policeman - for that matter, a jawan - is not a robot nor a political tool. He is a human being with emotions and feelings, besides which he maintains a high sense of pride in his uniform.

The need of the hour, therefore, is to bring in radical improvements. Security in all its manifestations has to be established in Jammu and Kashmir, the North-east and everywhere else in India. Our governance systems must be subjected to a thorough overhaul, shedding the colonial appurtenances that some of these still flaunt. The country's leadership must find sincere solutions. Only then will human rights abuses become extinct.

(The author is a retired Lieutenant-Colonel of the Indian Army.)
 


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