Our elite's fetish for human rights

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.

Arvind Lavakare