[Reader-list] Jaipur public tribunal on "terror in the name of countering terror"

[Fatima फ़ातिमा]

Jaipur public tribunal on terror in the name of countering terror

By Yoginder Sikand, TwoCircles.net,
Last month, the Rajasthan unit of the People's Union for Civil
Liberties, along with several other human rights' groups, organised a
two-day public hearing in Jaipur on the theme State Responses in the
Name of Countering Terrorism and Religious Conversion. It was attended
by a large number of activists from various parts of Rajasthan and
beyond.
In his opening remarks, the noted social activist and scholar Ram
Puniyani spoke about how communal violence in India is now being
rapidly transformed into organized pogroms against Muslims in which
key sections of the state and the media are playing a major role.
Condemning all forms of terror, including that engaged in by some
fringe Muslim outfits, Puniayni opined that what he called 'Hindutva
terrorism' today threatens to take the form of full-blown fascism,
which, while ostensibly targeted against Muslims and Christians,
actually aims at preserving the status quo in terms of caste/class
relations and also in promoting global imperialist forces. Lamenting
the silence of the media on 'Hindutva terrorism', he claimed that it
was possible that several other terror attacks that India has recently
witnessed other than those that occurred in Malegaon could also have
been the handiwork of Hindutva groups. He stressed the importance of
public tribunals as this one to articulate the voices of the victims
of state terror in a context when there was little hope for justice
from the courts and the state machinery. 'There now seem to be two
different systems of justice in this country', he claimed, arguing
that it was increasingly difficult for Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis and
the poor in general to gain succour from the courts, the police and
the media.

Sandeep Pandey
Magsaysay Award-winner and social activist from Lucknow Sandeep Pandey
spoke at length about what he saw as the deliberate hounding of
innocent Muslim youths across the country wrongly accused by the
police and intelligence agencies of being involved in acts of terror.
He focussed particularly on one case that he has sought to intervene
in—that of a Muslim youth from Lucknow, Shahbaz Hussain, who continues
to be in jail, accused of being behind the deadly bomb attacks that
ripped through Jaipur some months ago. Pandey and some of his
colleagues had visited Shahbaz's house and were convinced, so he said,
that he was actually innocent. He cited another instance where he had
personally intervened to help stop a fake encounter that had been
planned by a police officer and an army colonel involving a Kashmiri
youth whom they had planned to shoot and then falsely brand as a
terrorist. This had been plotted soon after what Pandey called the
'fake Batla House encounter'. The intention, he said, was probably to
'prove' that just as the police in other states were picking up
Muslims whom they had accused of as being 'terrorists', the UP police
'wanted to show that they, too, were doing something.'
Nilabh Mishra, editor of the Outlook Hindi magazine, echoed somewhat
the same sentiments. He accused sections of the media for simply
parroting the police version of events in cases of terror attacks for
which Muslims were invariably blamed, and remarked how the mounting
anti-Muslim prejudices spread by this section of the media was doing
irreparable harm to inter-community relations in the country and
communalizing vital pillars of the state machinery, including the
police and the judiciary. 'This represents an organised effort to
hijack the pillars of the establishment', he stressed.

Senior Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan remarked about how he
believed that 'Hindutva organizations in India enjoy almost unfettered
freedom to defy the law, to massacre people in their hundreds, with no
action being taken by the state against them.' And, despite this, he
added, 'they are referred to as patriots, not as terrorists, which is
what they actually are.' He pointed out that Hindutva forces are
desperately seeking to export what they call the 'Gujarat model' all
mover the country by resorting to terror attacks, blaming them on
Muslims and then seeking to galvanise Hindu support. He spoke about
the large number of Muslim youths, wrongly accused of being
terrorists, who continue to languish in jails. Several incarcerated
Muslims, who, when found innocent by the courts and released, do not
even get an apology, let alone any compensation for being picked up,
imprisoned and even brutally tortured. For the rest of their lives
these people are tainted in the eyes of society, and often even their
close relatives want to have nothing to do with them for fear of being
suspected by the police of being 'terrorist'-sympathisers.

Bhushan was bitterly critical of the role of the police, large
sections of which, he said, were biased against Muslims and who
themselves violate the law that they are meant to uphold. In this
regard, he called for the setting up of a high-powered enquiry
commission consisting of three retired Supreme Court judges to go into
the numerous cases of 'fake' and 'communalised' investigations by the
police in terror attacks. He noted that a police complaints authority
had been suggested by the Supreme Court some years ago, and remarked
that this is yet to be set up. He also called for adequate
representation of Muslims and other vulnerable minorities in the
police force. In addition, he suggested the need for a high-powered
international tribunal to examine the very real threats to secularism
and democracy in India.

Noted Delhi-based columnist Girish Nikam voiced similar concerns.
Reflecting on his own experience of having worked in the 'mainstream'
media for several years, he said that the attitude of large sections
of the media to the issue of terrorism was 'indefensible', in
particular their relative silence on Hindutva terror and their
sensational reporting of cases of Muslims being accused of terrorism
even in cases when no firm evidence had been brought against them.
This reflected what he said was a deep-rooted sentiment held by many
that Muslims were to be presumed guilty until proven innocent. And, he
added, any critique of this policy is often quickly branded as
'anti-national'.

Others who testified at the tribunal included Kavita Srivastava, head
of the Rajasthan unit of the PUCL, Tej Kumar, an advocate who has
taken up the case of some Rajasthani Muslim youth accused of as
terrorists, as well as several men and women from various parts of
Rajasthan whose relatives continue to languish in jail and some others
who had been arrested on false charges but were later released.
**
Public tribunals like this one serve a valuable purpose, enabling
victims to articulate their voices when these continue to go unheard
in the corridors of power. However, given the fact that, particularly
in the wake of the recent Mumbai attacks, the issue of terrorism has
assumed alarming proportions and the role of fringe radical Islamist
terror in fomenting strife in India groups cannot be ignored, it is
imperative that human rights groups take a broader and more balanced
perspective. While state terror and terror unleashed by Hindutva
groups rightly deserve to be condemned, for us to turn a blind eye to
terror engaged by radical Islamist groups is not just unacceptable,
unfair and unethical, but also, from the point of view of our joint
struggle against all forms of terror, which feed on each other,
extremely counter-productive.