[Reader-list] Salwa Judum

Sun Jul 12 03:26:15 IST 2009

Public orgy part, what was loss to them is seemingly the rogy of rest of the society, even expression of joys, leave basic ones of mating shall remind them of the ordeal. There should have been more sensitivity by an investigating agency, leave alone filing of reports, by the way could one give the police version of the entire incident. And how NHRC tip-toed it? Could be more dramatic perhaps.

________________________________
From: subhrodip sengupta <sub_sengupta at yahoo.co.in>
To: Readers list Yousuf Sarai. <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Sunday, 12 July, 2009 3:13:22 AM
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Salwa Judum

Ironically, giving dtails of rape by a woman out of it should be considered of the pre-, on and posst rape trauma she has been encountering, So haow many took her and how many raped her, while it could be possible some were just standing by, the lady IPS worker and not ex-IPS proves it all, besides it is a case of Gang Rape, multiple penetrations and not a single penetration, a sense of purity lost to public orgy. These women, who have no place in this civilised society, having been raped by the armed forces, having restricted choice to marry and virtually being oogled and even groped as sex objects,much so after rape, shall live on continuously under it's stigma, within this rule of law.. For the ignorant and the pervert, their world ends here.

________________________________
From: Rakesh Iyer <rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com>
To: sarai list <reader-list at sarai.net>
Sent: Saturday, 11 July, 2009 10:26:38 PM
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] Salwa Judum

Dear all

We have talked about human rights in Iran lately. We have had talks about
the same and also about democracy in Kashmir and Palestine as well. We have
heard about Kashmiri Pandits too and their view points, so also those of
'Kashmiri Muslims'. We have heard and still hear about the sad plight of the
Muslims and the Dalits. We do talk about gays, lesbians, trans-sexuality and
bisexuals as well. We talk about Ayodhya, Sri krishna Commission, and all
that. And this continues. (It's great to hear so many views frankly
speaking)

What we probably have forgotten in this endless talk, is about those
sections who are the indigenous people of the land called India (not the
only indigenous ones necessarily), who have been tortured, maimed,
brutalized and punished for no fault of theirs: the tribals. And we have
some atrocious movements like the Salwa Judm to look at. Is this the way to
fight Naxalites? Since when have common people become the ones to perform
functions on behalf of the police?

This movement needs to be seriously debated, and if the Article 377 can be
decriminalized, this movement which affects a much wider section of people
and society, and is resulting in deaths, and even rapes, should be dealt
with and pressure must be applied to stop it.

Below is an article related to Salwa Judum, in the recent issue of Tehelka.
Hope to see views coming out on it.

Regards

Rakesh

*The Evil That Men Do*

*Tribal women claiming rape by Salwa Judum men in Chhattisgarh put a
question mark on the NHRC, which rejected their testimonies. Photographs by
**SHAILENDRA PANDEY*

*AJIT SAHI* * Editor-at-Large*
**  *Assaulted* *Raped Women turned away by the NHRC seek justice*

*In the Indian setting, refusal to act on the testimony of the victim of
sexual assault in the absence of corroboration as a rule is adding insult to
injury. A girl or a woman in the tradition- bound non-permissive society of
India would be extremely reluctant even to admit that any incident that is
likely to reflect on her chastity had ever occurred… [A rape victim’s
testimony] does not require corroboration from any other evidence, including
the evidence of a doctor.* *— Supreme Court justices Arijit Pasayat and P
Sathasivam, July 2008*

FOR DECADES, the Supreme Court of India has cleaved to a rigorous legal
standard in cases of rape: the testimony of the victim is enough evidence to
launch the prosecution of the accused. Successive judgments over the years
have reinforced this position. Thousands of convictions of alleged rapists
have been effectively obtained on the basis of victims’ testimonies, with no
corroborative evidence sought or offered. Often, the courts have overlooked
minor discrepancies in the victims’ accounts, if the main narrative holds
up.

Jurists and social commentators in India have long argued that, apart from
being a most heinous crime against a woman’s person, her rape doubly curses
her in the Indian society by imparting her a stigma that no other crime
matches. That is why criminal investigation processes that the police must
follow, as well as the judicial procedures prescribed when charges of rape
arise, are unambiguous. This is best illustrated in the case of Hindi film
actor Shiney Ahuja, who was arrested last month in Mumbai when his
maidservant accused him of raping her. Ahuja has been denied bail, and
rightly so, for his right to seek justice shall arise at the trial and not
before or outside it.
What happens when the victims are destitute tribal women with no access to
police, judiciary, media?

But what happens when rape becomes a brutal tool of class oppression in a
wider social, political and economic war that men wage against one another,
the raped women merely the pawns on their chessboard, the act of rape itself
a side story, a cold-blooded strategy to terrorise an entire population into
submission? What happens when the victims of rape are some of India’s most
destitute tribal women, who live in virtually unreachable forests in
subhuman conditions; who have absolutely zero access to the police, the
judiciary, the media; whose verdant lands the mighty industrialists covet
because they hold in their womb some of India’s richest mineral resources?

What happens when those accused of rape are the hired guns of a dubious
state-backed militia that is the frontline in one of the world’s most brutal
civil wars? What happens when the Indian State pivots this war against
deeply entrenched Maoist insurgents on a take-no-prisoners approach, because
unless the Maoists are killed off and millions of tribal people removed from
their forests, hills and fields, corporate India won’t be able to claim the
bounties of their lands? What happens when it is abundantly clear that
accepting the charges of rape from such women would be very dangerous indeed
because that step just might begin to unravel this barbaric anti-people
militia, bringing an end to its unchecked reign of terror?

THIS IS the heartrending story of Chhattisgarh, and all the above questions
have only one answer: the Indian State cannot afford to honestly investigate
these women’s charges of rape and secure them justice. Therefore, it must be
forced to do so. In the following pages, readers of TEHELKAwill find graphic
gut-wrenching testimonies of some tribal women of Chhattisgarh describing
how they were brutalised by the men of the Salwa Judum, the tribal militia
that the state government sponsored four years ago and has since terrorised
tens of thousands of innocent tribal people, burning their houses down,
forcing them to abandon their villages where they had lived for generations,
to move into squalid government- controlled “camps”.

We traveled deep in the state’s highly forested southern region known as
Bastar, and located six women who were raped by the men of the Salwa Judum
[literally, peace movement]. We also spoke to one man who saw his sister
raped and then found her killed; their father, too, was killed then.. The
women and the man we met voluntarily gave their testimonies to us, which we
have recorded on tape. Most rapes pertain to the period following the
setting up of the Salwa Judum in 2005.

But the most disturbing part of this story came last year when the Supreme
Court asked the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) to go to
Chhattisgarh and investigate the charges of murder, rape, pillage and arson
brought against those men of the Salwa Judum who have been hired and armed
by the state police as Special Police Officers (SPOs). The report that an
NHRC ‘fact-finding’ team wrote is deeply troubling in that it blindly toes
the police and government line.
The NHRC report is deeply troubling as it blindly toes the police version.
It absolves the accused, too

Created by Parliament in 1993 as an autonomous statutory human rights
watchdog, the NHRC has long pretended to be the champion of the underdog.
Log on to its website today, and you will be justified to feel a gush of
relief at the rather selfcongratulatory headlines about jobs well done –
“NHRC takes suo moto cognisance of the alleged fake encounter in Uttarakhand
and recommends CBI inquiry”; “NHRC takes the railways police IG to task as
cops throw pregnant woman from moving train”; “NHRC orders the payment of
three lakh rupees monetary relief in a case of death in police custody”.

And yet, the NHRC refused to accept the testimonies of these tribal women of
Chhattisgarh that unequivocally detail how SPOs brutally raped them. Instead
of making the legally and morally sound recommendation that the state
government launch the prosecution of the accused, the NHRC wrote: “During
the enquiry of some specific allegations, the enquiry team also did not come
across any case of rape which could be substantiated.” Shockingly, the NHRC
happily absolved the accused too: “The allegations of rapes levelled against
the SPOs and security forces were not substantiated during the enquiry.”

The most stunning fact, of course, is the NHRC’s rejection of the
testimonies of five women from a single village – Pottenar in Bijapur
district – who deposed before it. Says the report: “The matter was
personally enquired from each of the five girls by a lady IPS officer of the
team. During the enquiry, it was observed that there were many
inconsistencies in the versions of alleged victims, in the petitions given
by them, as well as in the statements of the alleged victims. These
inconsistencies were with regard to the number of rape victims, number of
SPOs who took them away from the camp, number of SPOs who actually committed
the act and their identity and the accompanying circumstances.”

Shockingly, the report goes on to say: “All the victims stated that none of
them reported this matter to their parents or relatives or anyone else in
the camp or to the police.” Because the women raped by policemen did not
report the rape to the police, their testimonies are suspect?

So just when did the NHRC convert itself into a trial court? Just when did
it become the job of the NHRC to summarily dismiss, without proper
investigation, the charges of rape directly brought forward by the alleged
victims of that crime?

The chicanery at the NHRC began as it formed the investigative team. Acting
on a lawsuit from activist-lawyer Nandini Sundar against the Salwa Judum,
the Supreme Court said: “…We feel that in view of the serious allegations
relating to violation of human rights by Naxalites and Salwa Judum and the
living conditions in the refugee settlement colonies, it will be appropriate
if the NHRC examines/verifies these allegations... We leave it to the NHRC
to appoint an appropriate fact-finding Committee with such members as it
deems fit....”
The NHRC was asked to probe charges also against Salwa Judum. But it spoke
mostly to Judum supporters

So what did the NHRC do? To investigate charges of rape against Special
Police Officers who are fully backed by the state police and the government,
the NHRC decided to send a 16- member team — made up of exclusively
policemen and women! This included three IPS officers, four Deputy
Superintendents of Police, seven inspectors and one constable. Just why
would the country’s premier human rights watchdog not include even one
well-respected independent social activist in its fact-finding team? (The
team head, former DIG Sudhir Chowdhary, refused to talk about this. “I have
nothing to add to what is already in the report,” he told TEHELKA.)

IRONICALLY, THE NHRC investigation in Chhattisgarh was launched at the
behest of complainants Nandini Sundar and others, because they claimed that
the Salwa Judum was brutalising innocent tribal people of Chhattisgarh. Yet,
an overwhelming part of the NHRC report is based on the testimonies of
people inside the Salwa Judum camps – all, therefore, predictably speaking
in support of the Salwa Judum. An overwhelming number of documents and
conversations relied upon are with the state police – whose very conduct the
team had gone to investigate. The police and/or other security agencies
accompanied the NHRC team’s “independent” visits to the villages to
investigate allegations of police excesses. The petitioners complained that,
once, after the NHRC enquiry team had visited a village, “the Salwa Judum
leaders subsequently went there and issued death threats…” So how did the
NHRC investigate this complaint? It sought a report from the state’s
Director-General of Police!

In fact, the entire NHRC report reads like a primary school textbook that
pares down everything to a simple black-andwhite narrative, the Salwa Judum
overwhelmingly white – and hardly guilty of any excesses, absolved of all
charges of rape and murder – and the Naxals the blackest of the blacks, the
grossest violators of human rights. The 16-member NHRC team toured the
region a total of only two weeks. But its report reads like a sociological
treatise waxing eloquent on the history of the Naxal movement, offering
innumerable sweeping statements without any piece of evidence that they may
have collected during their two-week investigations.

Shockingly, the NHRC report says: “From the interaction with the villagers
it also appears that many of the tribal girls were sexually exploited by the
Naxalites.” And yet, the NHRC did not move to document the testimonies of
such girls.

At least one of the petitioners, former CPIMLA Manish Kunjum, says the NHRC
report quotes him wrongly that he “admitted during interaction with the
enquiry team that the policies followed by the Naxalites were responsible
for the spontaneous outburst of the tribals”. “I never said anything of this
sort,” Kunjam told TEHELKA. “They are exaggerating my view.”

All is not lost, though. On June 16, 2009, some of these victims saw a
glimmer of hope as Amrit Kerkatta, a local judicial magistrate in a
Dantewada sub-district, began recording the testimonies of six rape victims
after receiving their petitions. On July 3, he heard six witnesses, one for
each of the victims. The judge has now fixed the next hearing for July 17.

Sudha Bharadwaj, a lawyer at the Bilaspur High Court in Chhattisgarh who is
representing these women, told TEHELKA: “The magistrate has taken the
longest possible route to make doubly sure that the testimonies of the women
are on record. It is now up to him to prepare the charge-sheet — which the
police should have done in the normal course — and commit the case to
trial.”

If indeed the accused are finally tried on the basis of the testimonies of
the raped women, then the lawyers representing the victims will certainly
press these words of Supreme Court justices Pasayat and Sathasivam:

“It is an irony that while we are celebrating woman’s rights in all spheres,
we show little or no concern for her honour. It is a sad reflection on the
attitude of indifference of society towards the violation of human dignity
of the victims of sex crimes. The socio-economic status, religion, race,
caste or creed of the accused or the victim are irrelevant considerations in
the sentencing policy. Protection of society and deterring the criminal are
the avowed objects of law and that is required to be achieved by imposing
appropriate sentence.

“We must remember that a rapist not only violates the victim’s privacy and
personal integrity but inevitably causes serious psychological as well as
physical harm. Rape is not merely a physical assault — it is often
destructive of the whole personality of the victim. A murderer destroys the
body of his victim, a rapist degrades the very soul of the helpless female.

“A prosecutrix of a sex offence cannot be put on par with an accomplice. She
is in fact a victim of the crime... What is necessary is that the court must
be conscious of the fact that it is dealing with the evidence of a person
who is interested in the outcome of the charge levelled by her.”

*WRITER’S EMAIL*
ajit at tehelka.com

*From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 6, Issue 28, Dated July 18, 2009*

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