[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 132 (Tuesday, September 20, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 20, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                           INJUSTICE IN INDIA

                                 ______


                            HON. DAN BURTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                      Tuesday, September 20, 1994

  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, the repressive government of 
India has struck another blow against democratic principles, charging 
former member of Parliament Simranjit Singh Mann under the tyrannical 
Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act [TADA]. According to Asia 
Watch, ``TADA reverses the presumption of innocence, placing the burden 
on the accused to prove he is not guilty. This violates international 
standards and Indian law.'' There is a grave danger that the Punjab 
police will kill Mr. Mann. The regime has already taken away his 
passport in violation of all international standards.
  As if this weren't bad enough, the regime seized the luggage of 
Punjab Human Rights Organization president Ajit Singh Bains, a former 
justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, while he was at the 
airport awaiting a flight to Great Britain last week. Justice Bains was 
prevented from leaving the country. Justice Bains, like Mr. Mann, is a 
proponent of a peaceful movement to achieve independence for Khalistan.
  Many of us remember Justice Bains' eloquent testimony before the 
Congressional Human Rights Caucus 3 years ago. He detailed brutal 
abuses of the most basic liberties by the Indian regime in occupied 
Khalistan. What has made Justice Bains unfit to leave the country since 
then? Perhaps the Indian regime knows that freedom for Khalistan is 
near at hand.
  The Congress is well aware that the oppressed Sikhs of Khalistan have 
been waging an ongoing peaceful struggle for freedom. On October 7, 
1987, the Sikh leaders declared Khalistan independent. When Mr. Mann 
spoke at a gurdwara--a Sikh temple--in support of a peaceful movement 
to achieve freedom for Khalistan, he exercised what we here would 
consider his legitimate right of free speech. But no such right exists 
for Sikhs in the so-called world's largest democracy. For advocating a 
peaceful movement for Sikh freedom, India charges Mr. Mann with 
terrorism. This tyrannical action further proves that Indian democracy 
is a fraud.
  Mr. Mann's case is not unusual. Neither is that of Justice Bains. 
India has killed at least 115,000 Sikhs since 1984, 150,000 Christians 
in Nagaland since 1947, and 40,000 Kashmiri Muslims since 1988. It also 
faces freedom movements in Assam, Manipur, and Tamil Nadu. If India is 
the world's largest democracy, why do so many want to get out from 
under Indian rule?
  A recent report from Human Rights Watch/Asia states that the Indian 
regime has set up at least 200 torture centers throughout Punjab, 
Khalistan. One police officer says that ``torture is used routinely. 
During my five years with the Punjab police, I estimate that 4,000 to 
5,000 were tortured at my police station alone.'' Another police 
officer says, ``Without exception, any person who is detained at the 
police station is tortured.'' Sikhs who die of torture are routinely 
listed as having died in a fake encounter with the police. According to 
the report, these staged ``encounters'' account for most of the 
killings there.
  On July 17, UPI reported that ``several Swiss drug companies are 
preparing to wind up or limit operations in India.'' The Swiss 
ambassador is quoted as saying that ``the investment climate is bad.'' 
And Dr. Jack Wheeler of the Freedom Research Foundation predicts in the 
June 27 issue of Strategic Investment that India ``will be gone as we 
know [it] within ten years.'' India is not one country, but a polyglot, 
a conglomeration of several countries put together under British 
colonial rule. It is destined to fall apart. Thanks to the work of 
organizations like the Council of Khalistan, the day of freedom for the 
nations oppressed by India is closer.
  It is time for the administration to place sanctions on India. This 
Congress must pass H.R. 1519, which will cut off India's development 
aid until human rights are respected. We must also pass H. Con. Res. 
134, which calls for a free and fair vote to determine the future of 
Khalistan. The charges against Mr. Simranjit Singh Mann and the action 
against Justice Ajit Singh Bains make these actions more important than 
ever.

                          Council of Khalistan

     For immediate release: September 19, 1994.
     Washington, DC.


                  justice bains denied exit from india

       Washington, DC, September 19.--On orders from the Indian 
     Home Ministry, Indian airport security officials denied 
     retired High Court Judge Justice Ajit Singh Bains exit from 
     India on Thursday, September 15. The outspoken Sikh champion 
     for human rights and political freedom attempted to board a 
     flight in Delhi bound for the United Kingdom. Bains was 
     detained at the final security check and humiliated by 
     security guards who discovered his name on an official Home 
     Ministry list forbidding him to leave India. Justice Bains is 
     Chairman of the Punjab Human Rights Organization.
       Like other leaders speaking out for Sikh freedom and human 
     rights, Bains faces continued harassment at the hands of 
     Indian government police. Restrained by what he terms an 
     ``undeclared detention,'' Bains and visitors to his house 
     have been under constant government surveillance. His 
     telephone has been tapped and his movement restricted.
       Recently, the Indian government denied a passport to 
     Simranjit Singh Mann, Sikh political leader and vocal 
     advocate for Sikh freedom, after he made a speech in support 
     of Khalistan. Mr. Mann has faced unrelenting government 
     harassment ranging from the denial of his freedom of movement 
     to imprisonment and torture. Justice Bains, too, has been 
     jailed on numerous occasions.
       Despite the experience of leaders such as Bains and Mann, 
     India denies any violation of human rights. While in the 
     United States in May, Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao 
     adamantly maintained India's innocence on human rights 
     violations. Independent human rights organizations, however, 
     have exposed a long list of Indian government atrocities and 
     a history of the brutal denial of human freedom. According to 
     Dead Silence: The Legacy of Abuses in Punjab, published by 
     Human Rights Watch/Asia, ``The deliberate use of torture and 
     execution as counter-insurgency tactics was not merely 
     tolerated but actively encouraged by senior government 
     officials.''
       Dr. Gurmit Singh Aulakh, President of the Council of 
     Khalistan, who spoke to Justice Bains by telephone, warns the 
     Indian government not to harm Sikh leaders. ``The eyes of the 
     world are upon you,'' said Dr. Aulakh. ``You no longer 
     operate in the vacuum you once enjoyed. The longer you hold 
     Justice Bains and S. S. Mann against their will, the more 
     ridiculous your protestations of innocence look to the world. 
     You have been exposed. Over 115,000 Sikhs have been killed in 
     the struggle for a free Khalistan. No amount of oppression or 
     lies will divert us from the road of independence. If India 
     is the democracy it claims to be, then leaders like Bains and 
     Mann should be allowed free access to the international 
     community. Instead you brutally silence the voice of the Sikh 
     nation, yet seek inclusion among the free nations of the 
     world. India can no longer maintain its big lie. The time for 
     Sikh freedom is now. Free Khalistan today!''

              [From the Washington Times, Sept. 17, 1994]

                    India Said to Torture Returnees

                      (By Heinz-Rudolf Othmerding)

       New Delhi.--When Kuldeep Singh, 21, a Sikh from the 
     northern Indian state of Punjab, stepped off an Aeroflot 
     flight on May 28 in New Delhi, he was a healthy man.
       Two days later, Mr. Singh was dead. Upon inspection, his 
     body bore signs of torture.
       Mr. Singh sold flowers in a township near Duesseldorf, 
     Germany, and was not a particularly politically minded man. 
     Seeking only the affluence of the West, he lived in Germany 
     illegally until he was discovered, denied asylum and forced 
     to return to India.
       What in Germany was a routine legal procedure ended in his 
     death in India. Officials blackmailed first Mr. Singh and 
     then his family.
       Despite denials by the Indian police, Western and Indian 
     human rights activists are convinced that Indian deportees 
     returning home after their applications for asylum are 
     rejected abroad are often arrested, tortured and blackmailed.
       And if the victim's relatives cannot scrape together the 
     money demanded by corrupt officials, the deportee might even 
     face death.
       ``If you come back after years in Germany, then the 
     assumption is that you must have either accumulated a lot of 
     money yourself or transferred it to your family in India,'' 
     says Ravi Nair, a well-known Indian human rights activist.
       Shamsher Singh, another deportee from Germany, probably has 
     a Stuttgart-based aid organization and a German journalist in 
     Indian to thank for his well-being.
       The German organization gave him enough money to cover the 
     bribe that officials were likely to demand, and the 
     journalist managed to retrieve him from the airport.
       When Shamsher Singh was finally allowed to leave the 
     airport with the journalist on Aug. 19, he had already 
     encountered both intelligence and immigration officials. Only 
     the money he brought helped him escape torture, the Punjabi 
     said later.
       A Cologne-based lawyers group has been waiting since Sept. 
     1 for news from Joginder Singh, also deported from Germany.
       Mr. Singh, who was active in the Sikh separatist movement, 
     had been refused asylum in Germany for the first time in 1992 
     and deported to India. According to the lawyers, airport 
     police let him go that time after extorting 50,000 rupees, 
     then about $1,500, from him.
       Mr. Singh subsequently resumed his political activities in 
     Punjab but fled to Germany again after being arrested and 
     tortured. After his second deportation, he vanished without a 
     trace.
       Several European states like Denmark or Switzerland 
     introduced checks to ensure the safe arrival in India of 
     deportees from those countries.
       Embassy staff or Indian contacts, mostly human rights 
     activists, are asked to monitor the arrival in India of 
     unsuccessful applicants for political asylum in the two 
     countries.
       But there is no such system for deportees returning from 
     Germany. Sources at the German Embassy in New Delhi say they 
     hear of deportations only sporadically.
       Deportation procedures are not centralized in Germany, they 
     say, so every city or district can deport people through any 
     third country.
       However, problems are mounting. At the end of 1993, there 
     were 36,000 Indians living in Germany, of whom at least 
     10,000 were under orders to leave the country. Of 12,266 
     applications for asylum in 1993, only six were successful.
       Mr. Nair, the Indian human rights activist, suspects that 
     the Indian Embassy in Bonn alerts airport authorities and the 
     Punjab police the minute it issues the documents to 
     deportees.
       They are awaited in Bombay or New Delhi, and arrest, 
     torture and blackmail frequently follow.

                          ____________________