Author: Arvind Lavakare
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: November 26, 2002
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2002/nov/26arvind.htm
If Kuldip Nayar were a Russian,
he would have publicly demanded a prison sentence for Vladimir Putin --
for permitting the use of a nerve gas that choked the human rights and
lives of 60-odd terrorists who recently held some 800 hostages in a Moscow
theatre. And how, pray, would Putin have reacted? By deporting the accuser
to Siberia, complete with paper and typewriter.
For that matter, how would George
W Bush have reacted if Kuldip Nayar had pleaded for the human rights of
those captured Talibanised individuals in Afghanistan, whom the US forces
has quarantined in Guantanamo Bay? Bush would, in all probability, have
had Nayar too whisked away to that isolated bay in Cuba.
In India, Nayar's concern for human
rights is so respected that he is not only assigned a Human Rights Watch
column in the prestigious The Hindu newspaper but his written petition
is enough to immediately move our National Human Rights Commission to order
police protection for a doctor, whose life was feared at the hands of the
Delhi police just because he rubbished its Ansal Plaza encounter that killed
two armed Pakistani infiltrators.
Such, dear readers, is the milk
of human kindness that overflows in many of our elite intellectuals who
want us to believe that the human rights of dacoits, murderers, rapists
and terrorists are as sacred as a cow is to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
Such, dear readers, is the softness of the soft Indian State where there
are journalists and politicians alike who always employ the word 'militant'
rather than 'terrorist,' in the hope of making us believe that the two
words are synonyms in Roget's Thesaurus. The Pakistanis, no doubt, chuckle
at this description of those whom it regularly sends out to create mayhem
and mass murders on our soil, though they would love it if the guys are
dubbed as 'freedom fighters.'
This attempt to equate a 'militant'
with a 'terrorist' was ruthlessly exposed by Prabhu Chawla, editor of India
Today magazine, in his recent interview of Ghulam Nabi Azad on the Aaj
Tak television channel. Pointing to the Common Minimum Programme document
of the Congress-PDP coalition in J&K that lay in front of Azad, the
Congress chief in J&K, Chawla repeatedly asked his quarry as to why
the CMP repeatedly mentioned 'militants,' but not 'terrorists.' Did the
Congress believe the two words were the same? Each time, Azad squirmed
and smiled sheepishly, and ultimately ended up saying it was a matter of
interpretation.
Now Azad has never given the impression
of being particularly proficient in the English language and he may be
forgiven in thinking that only 'interpretation' differentiates a 'militant'
from a 'terrorist.' Somebody must therefore make him wise -- quickly, judging
by the speed with which the J&K coalition led by Mufti Mohammed Sayeed
is releasing 'militant' leaders from the state's jails, and also preparing
to enrich the family members of slain 'militants' who, he says, had taken
to the gun without even the silent consent of their poor dear wives and
children.
Any standard English dictionary
will tell you that a 'militant' denotes someone combative who is ready
to fight, especially for a cause. On the other hand, a 'terrorist' is one
whose actions inspire fear or dread. Despite employing people like Shashi
Tharoor who write novels now and again, the bureaucracy of the United Nations
is, poor dear, still struggling to define 'terrorism.' But unknown to millions,
including Kuldip Nayar possibly, the phrase 'terrorist act' has been constitutionally
defined in India since. June 4, 1985! The Constitution (Application to
J&K) Order of the President of India of that date defines 'terrorist
act' to mean 'any act or thing by using bombs, dynamite or other explosive
substances or inflammable substances or firearms or other lethal weapons
or poisons or noxious gases or other chemicals or any other substances
(whether biological or otherwise) of a hazardous nature.'
Logically, the perpetrator of such
a well-defined 'terrorist act' and one who aids or abets it is very much
a 'terrorist,' not a 'militant.' Young Hindu women trained in rifle shooting
by the VHP are 'militants,' not 'terrorists;' the men who sprayed bullets
in Akshardham or who attack the camps of the Rashtriya Rifles or lay IEDs
are all 'terrorists,' not 'militants.'
The billion dollar question is:
what human right do these 'terrorists' have? What human right do they have
when they themselves care nothing at all about the life, liberty, equality
and dignity of the individuals whom they target and terrorise with their
'terrorist acts?' Why arrest them red-handed, file cases, argue against
bail from the courts, try them indefinitely, hear their judicial appeals
and give free food to them for years when a couple of bullets in their
bodies will rid us of the monstrosity in quick time?
Yes, yes, the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights (adopted by the UN General Assembly in December
1966) is enforceable in our country through Article 13 of the Constitution
of India. But does the US enforce this international treaty by shutting
out the world to those it has confined to Guantanamo Bay? Does Russia do
so in Chechnya? Does Pakistan confer such rights on its minorities subjected
to the blasphemy law? Indeed, after 9/11, the US has become so paranoid
that the latest Human Rights Watch report lashes it as well as the UK for
racial attacks and assault on the dignity of Muslims, Sikhs and people
of West Asian and South Asian descent. For all you know, India and its
National Human Rights Commission as well as the Kuldip Nayars may well
be the only ones in the world today who are obsessed with the fetish of
human rights.
In any case, what about the human
rights of the larger population that suffers the inconveniences of the
frequent city bandhs, municipal workers' strikes, bank strikes et al? What
about the human rights of starvation sufferers in Rajasthan and Madhya
Pradesh? What about the rights of the pedestrians without pavements to
walk on? Has the NHRC ever issued a suo motu notice to anyone in either
of these abuses of human rights?
To revert to the terrorists, what
about the human rights of the police that take on the terrorists for the
sake of a living? Do they and their families have no rights to be protected?
How many hours must a constable or a police officer work in a week? How
much workload must he take on?
By the way, has anybody bothered
to provide 'the healing touch' (the Mufti's pet phrase) to the policemen
killed by ambushes in that petrifying period of the eighties in Punjab?
How many of the Special Operations Group have been decimated by IEDs in
J&K in recent years? A deputy inspector general was killed on the steps
of the Golden Temple as he came out offering prayers and a young officer
who was out for a morning run was gunned down in the Patiala Stadium. Were
those 'genuine encounters' as opposed to the 'fake encounter' alleged by
the likes of 'Dr' Hari Krishan? But no human rights organisation talks
of the killing of those two Punjab Police officers or of the 2000 others
and their relatives killed by the terrorists in Punjab, and of the unquantified
SOG policemen killed in J&K. No writs in favour of these policemen
have been filed. And how many human rights activists have visited that
National Security Guard commando who has been in a precarious condition
ever since he had been hit in his intestines by terrorist bullets in Akshardham
nearly three months ago?
Instead of even lip sympathy, the
officers and men of the Punjab Police who fought the terrorists are in
the dock -- some 1,500 cases were not long ago filed against them, and
many suspended from service pending investigations. And now, in J&K,
the Mufti with the aid of the Congress party is disbanding the SOG in dishonour.
Of what kind is this milk of human kindness in India that expects its policemen
to somehow get rid of terrorism without waving even a fly swatter?
In 1991, Section 197 of our Criminal
Procedure Code was amended to ensure that a court could not take cognisance
of the alleged offence by a policeman without the sanction of the government
concerned. But the amendment does not prevent a first information report
being registered against a policeman or investigations being conducted
against him or even his being arrested. A further amendment is therefore
vital to bring about a procedure like the military court martial in order
to protect the police from media trials even as the cause of human rights
is served.
Time has also come when human rights
activists evolve a system of periodic interaction with the country's police
in order to understand its myriad problems. Under the Protection of Human
Rights Act, 1993 (as amended in 2000), our NHRC has 10 functions to perform.
One of these is to 'review the factors, including acts of terrorism, that
inhabit the enjoyment of human rights and recommend appropriate remedial
measures.' This vital function is one that the NHRC seems to have overlooked
while it has preoccupied itself with suo motu interventions in alleged
violations of human rights by a public servant.
It is precisely because the NHRC
hasn't had rapport with the police that, as Arun Shourie said at a seminar,
'anything and everything is believed, in particular by sections of the
media, so long as it is against the police.' That rapport is overdue and
ought to be established .now, just now.
Meanwhile, Justice J S Verma, NHRC
chairman, is advised to seek entry into Guantanamo Bay, and Kuldip Nayar
could seek an interview with Vladimir Putin on the use of nerve gas to
finish off the terrorists in that Moscow theatre.
