Human Rights
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On 24 May 1997, newspapers reported that Ajit Singh Sandhu, former
Superintendent of Tarn Taran police district, committed suicide by
throwing himself in front of a train. Sandhu had been imprisoned for a
few months on charges including those centering on the disappearance of
Jaswant Singh Khalra. It was reported that he had consumed alcohol, had
driven to the railway track in his own car, and had left a suicide note
which said "it is better to die than to live in this shame." Sandhu had
been a trusted ally of K.P.S. Gill, former Director General of Police
for Punjab, who had led the counterinsurgency against Sikh militants in
the state and stood personally accused by Human Rights Watch and other
groups of shepherding the massive human rights violations that occurred
under his watch. In the face of rising claims of extrajudicial
executions and hasty cremations, the suicide of Sandhu, a figure who
would have been implicated in many of them, should clearly have been
investigated further. But K.P.S. Gill, now retired, seized the
opportunity to rail against what he called "an utterly compromised human
rights lobby." Newspapers across the country carried the full text of
his statement that inveighed the nation for ingratitude toward its
"heroes" like Ajit Singh Sandhu who had saved India from the brink of
disintegration. It further castigated people for permitting human rights
activists "who will work with any cause that serves their personal ends,
whether criminal, political or secessionist" to thrive (sic) on Indian
soil The statement chided the State for not "educating itself on how to
tackle individuals and groups trying to destroy it," and went on to tell
the parliament how to bring about the necessary legal amendments which
would protect courageous police officers of Punjab from the kind of
humiliation that apparently drove Sandhu to suicide. It concluded that
the bud of Khalistan had been nipped through the achievements of
officers like Sandhu, which prevented the possible balkanization of
India.
The charge of Sandhu's involvement in the abduction
and death of Jaswant Singh Khalra - who was not a secessionist but a
human rights investigator - disappeared in the sweep of celebratory
coverage of the "war without quarter." K.P.S. Gill subsequently
requested the Prime Minister for legislation that would define
"appropriate criteria to judge the actions of those who fought this war
on behalf of the Indian State," identifying human rights groups with
separatists by adding that "for those who were comprehensively defeated
in the battle for Khalistan, public interest litigation has become the
most convenient strategy for vendetta." But in 1998, a police officer
under Sandhu's command who came forward as an eyewitness to Khalra's
seizure, torture, and murder gave lie to the picture of Sandhu and the
police of Tarn Taran district as valiant defenders of the Indian nation.
Indeed, this eyewitness alleged that the conspiracy to eliminate Khalra
was sanctioned at the highest levels.
Heightening awareness of the push for accountability
has led to a rise in calls for the necessity of impunity for rights
abusers. In addition, there have been deliberate attempts to thwart the
efforts of human rights workers. Since India has never allowed Amnesty
International, Human Rights Watch or other internationally respected
organizations to visit Punjab, grassroots workers have provided the bulk
of the information that has come out. But these workers are then
particularly vulnerable to harassments and threats in India. Many of the
activists now working with the Committee for Coordination on
Disappearances in Punjab have been themselves arrested, tortured, and
jailed (Kumar among them). Since the work of documenting disappearances
has begun in earnest, an elaborate hoax was orchestrated to frame
several activists in a purported plot to break Sikh militants out of
Burail jail. This has the effect not only of tying up the time and
resources of the remaining activists - who now have to mobilize to get
their colleagues released - but of identifying human rights activism
with sympathy for militancy in the public mind.
On July 18, 1998, three members of the Committee for
Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab came out of India to speak
about the efforts of the Committee at Columbia University in New York.
These were Ram Narayan Kumar (current author), Amar Singh Chahal
(Lawyers for Human Rights) and Inderjit Singh Jaijee (Movement Against
State Repression). Also speaking at the human rights symposium were
Cynthia Mahmood (current author), Mary Pike (Center for Constitutional
Law), and Ami Laws (Physicians for Human Rights) from the United States.
Just days after the seminar, word was received that Jaspal Singh Dhillon,
another member of the Committee for Coordination, head of the Human
Rights and Democracy Forum, and close associate of Jaswant Singh
Khalra's, had been arrested in India once again in connection with the
jailbreak conspiracy. A string of volunteers for the Committee for
Coordination were picked up for questioning at the same time.
We fear for the well-being and indeed for the lives
of our colleagues who continue to work to document the egregious abuse
of state power exemplified in the phenomenon of "disappearance."
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