[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.
____________________