Frontline

April  2000
Human Rights



‘CC echoes reactionary voices’

BY Shekhar Krishnan and Anthony Samy

Normally, we would welcome the formation of any new organisation committed to the defence of democratic, civil or human rights. However, we would like to register several points of objection with the content of the article by Javed Anand.

The article acknowledges the contribution of the existing organisations in exposing state repression and creating public awareness about rights. However, to justify the formation of a new organisation, the article proceeds to slander these groups. Other organisations, it claims, have ignored the violation of the basic rights of people by "militants" in Kashmir and the North-East; they keep "mum" on the question of the Kashmiri Pandit refugees; some of these groups "function as barely disguised fronts of groups like the PWG"; and so on.

The editorial staff of CC have access to a number of reports that existing groups have compiled on Kashmir and Punjab, in which the misdeeds of the state and of religious fundamentalist organisations have been severely criticised (e.g., Kashmir: Blood in the Valley and Punjab: People Fight Back). Hence Anand’s charges are not innocent.

Indeed the very same charges are routinely levelled by communal groups and the state against existing rights organisations, and are not the product of a simple concern for the victims of "militancy". Rather, they are invoked whenever state terror is exposed. For example, when these organisations recently documented the AP police’s kidnapping, torture and murder of three ‘senior’ PWG leaders, the chief minister had, like Javed Anand, claimed that these organisations were fronts for the PWG.

With regard to the Kashmiri Pandits, Javed Anand and PUHR (in its resolution at its inaugural convention) suffer from a strange amnesia. Have they forgotten the role of governor Jagmohan? Claiming that "if Hindus and Muslims live together in the Valley, that will demoralise the armed forces," he arranged for the transportation of Hindu Pandits from the Valley. This state-engineered exodus, combined with the miserable plight of the refugees, has allowed the state and the communalists to label the national aspirations of Kashmiris as "communal." In this effort, the politics of the Hindu and Islamic communalists converge.

In fact the greatest terror in Kashmir, the North–East and AP is carried out by the state and landlord armies. Anyone who demands independence for Kashmir or Nagaland, or any peasant demanding land or better wages, is labelled a "terrorist" or "extremist"; It is pity CC has decided to join in the chorus of such reactionary voices.

We realise that Anand has written this article in his individual capacity. However, it is difficult to ignore the obvious links between the leadership of the PUHR and the editorial board of CC. Indeed, many of the participants in the February PUHR convention, including us, have seen this article as an unofficial statement of the PUHR position.

(Anthony Samy is secretary and Shekhar Krishnan is a member of the Lokshahi Hakk Sanghatana).

 

 



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