[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 133 (Wednesday, September 21, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 21, 1994]



               SIKH LEADERS HARASSED BY INDIAN GOVERNMENT

                                 ______


                            HON. DAN BURTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 21, 1994

  Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, the Government of India has 
struck another blow against democratic principles. They have charged 
former Member of Parliament Simranjit Singh Mann under the oppressive 
Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act [TADA]. Under TADA, anyone can 
be detained by Indian security forces for up to 2 years without any 
charges being filed. According to Asia Watch, ``TADA reverses the 
presumption of innocence, placing the burden on the accused to prove he 
is not guilty. This violates every international human rights 
standard.''
  As if this wasn't bad enough, the government has forcibly prevented 
the President of the Punjab Human Rights Organization, Ajit Singh 
Bains, from leaving the country to speak at a conference in London. A 
retired high court justice, Justice Bains was detained at the final 
security checkpoint because his name appeared on an official Home 
Ministry list of people forbidden to leave the country. Justice Bains, 
like Mr. Mann, is a proponent of a peaceful movement to achieve 
independence for Khalistan.
  Many of us remember Justice Bain's eloquent testimony before the 
Congressional Human Rights Caucus 3 years ago. He detailed brutal 
abuses of the most basic liberties by Indian security forces in 
Khalistan. Why would the world's largest democracy prohibit a 
distinguished former judge from traveling abroad to speak about human 
rights? Does a legitimate democracy maintain lists of people who are 
prohibited to leave the country because of their advocacy of peaceful 
change? Prohibiting people from traveling and seizing their passports 
solely because of their political views is a serious violation of 
widely recognized human rights standards.
  The U.S. Congress is well aware of the struggle of the Sikh people 
for freedom and democracy. When Mr. Mann spoke at a Sikh temple in 
support of a peaceful movement to achieve freedom for Khalistan, he 
exercised what we here would consider his legitimate right to free 
speech. But no such right exists for Sikhs or Kashmiris in India. For 
advocating a peaceful movement for Sikh freedom, Mr. Mann has been 
charged with terrorism.
  Mr. Mann's case is not unusual. Neither is that of Justice Bains. 
Indian forces have killed, by some estimates, several hundred thousand 
Sikhs in Punjab, Christians in Nagaland, and Muslims in Kashmir. 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.
  Mr. Speaker, the Indian Government must clean up its act and stop the 
atrocities. The charges against Mr. Mann should be dropped, and both 
Mr. Mann and Justice Bains should be allowed to travel freely.
  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 House 
Concurrent Resolution 134, which calls for a free and fair vote to 
determine the future of Khalistan. In addition, Congress must approve 
House Resolution 144, calling for a free and fair plebiscite in 
Kashmir.
  I ask unanimous consent to include in the Record a number of articles 
detailing recent human rights abuses in India.

                          Council of Khalistan

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


                  JUSTICE BAINS DENIED EXIT FROM INDIA

       Washington, DC.--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 violations 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 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 Tribune, Sept. 8, 1994]

                      Katia Case: 2 More Cops Held

       Chandigarh, September 4.--At least two more cops of the 
     Punjab Police were arrested today as the incident of 
     abduction and ``attempt'' to rape of a French national, Ms 
     Katia, has put the state police in the dock.
       The arrests followed another identification parade of 
     policemen held at Punjab Police * * * in which the victim and 
     two of her Kenyan friends, who were also beaten up during the 
     incident, identified the constables.
       With this the number of persons who have been held on 
     charges of abduction and attempt to rape the French girl has 
     risen to five. Four of these are Punjab policemen while one 
     is the friend of a VVIP related to a key political figure of 
     the city.
       The police has also impounded the brand new Contessa car 
     with a Delhi registration number belonging to one of the 
     friends of the VVIP ward.
       The victim, Ms Katia, was today produced before the 
     Judicial Magistrate, Kharar, to record her statement about 
     the incident under Section 164 Cr P.C. Her Kenyan friends 
     also gave a statement to the magistrate.
       Senior police officials of the state are reported to have 
     held meetings in the day to deal with the situation even as 
     there was no sign of taking any action against the VVIP ward, 
     who is being blamed as the main culprit.
       Ms. Katia was picked up by the gunmen of the VVIP ward and 
     taken to a heavily guarded house in Chandigarh where she 
     was allegedly molested.
       The state police seems to be on its toes due to the 
     incident following pressure from the Union Home Ministry to 
     take action. The ministry is to be sent a detailed report on 
     the incident by tomorrow.
       This has been done following a CPI leader, Mrs. Vimla Dang, 
     announcing that a notice for call-attention motion has been 
     given to be brought up in the Assembly when it meets on 
     Tuesday. She announced that the proceedings of the House 
     would be stalled to seek action against the guilty.
       Meanwhile, the city unit of the Janata Dal has demanded the 
     resignation of the Chief Minister, Mr. Beant Singh, in view 
     of the incident.
       Khabab (FOC): Katia, the French girl who was molested by a 
     family member of a senior Punjab Congress leader and some 
     Punjab policemen, was produced along with her two friends 
     before the Judicial Magistrate here on Sunday by the police.
       According to Mr. Anil Kaushik, advocate for the 
     complainant, the statements of Katia, Philips and James were 
     recorded under Section 164 of the Cr P C in which they 
     narrated the whole incident which happened on the night of 
     August 31.
       Amritsar (UNI): Punjab Chief Minister, Mr. Beant Singh, 
     said here that he had directed Punjab Police chief K.P.S. 
     Gill to book the culprits who had allegedly molested French 
     tourist Katia at Mohali and Chandigarh two days back.
       Talking to newsmen after addressing a public meeting at 
     Jandiala, he said nobody was above the law. He refused to 
     reveal the name of the VVIP involved in the molestation 
     saying everything would come to light within a few days.
       Phillaur (FOC): Punjab BJP chief Madan Mohan Mittal has 
     condemned the Mohali incident involving the molestation of a 
     French girl allegedly by a family member of a senior Congress 
     leader and some Punjab policemen.
       Stating this here today, Mr. Mittal demanded immediate 
     resignation of the Punjab Chief Minister and a high-level 
     inquiry by the CBI in this connection. He said the Chief 
     Minister had no moral right to stay in his office as his 
     government was involved in a serious allegation.
                                  ____


              [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 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 
     India 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 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.
                                  ____


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

                 Temple Shines, but Sikh Anger Survives

                      (By Heinz-Rudolf Othmerding)

       Amritsar, India.--On the night of June 5, 1984, Indian 
     troops stormed the Golden Temple in Amritsar and killed an 
     estimated 2,500 people, including many innocent pilgrims.
       Ten years later, ``Operation Bluestar,'' which targeted the 
     holiest shrine of the world's 22 million Sikhs, is all but 
     forgotten.
       Artillery fire destroyed the Akal Takht, the temple's 
     congregation platform for high priests, and blasted holes in 
     the extensive temple complex.
       During more peaceful times, radical Sikhs under Jarnail 
     Singh Bhindranwale had been promised much by the government 
     of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
       The Punjabis had been assured of their own state capital, 
     more self-determination and water for their fields. But Mrs. 
     Gandhi manipulated Mr. Bhindranwale and reneged on her 
     promises.
       Feeling cheated and betrayed, Mr. Bhindranwale launched an 
     armed separatist struggle against the Indian government--a 
     fight he was to lose, along with his life, on the night of 
     June 5.
       Two months after Bluestar, Mrs. Gandhi was fatally shot by 
     her Sikh bodyguards. The assassination unleashed free-for-all 
     terrorism in India, and Sikhs were slaughtered all over the 
     country.
       A jumbo jet belonging to Air India exploded over the 
     Atlantic.
       Sikhs in Punjab grouped together in increasingly militant 
     sects and almost turned the war they couldn't win against 
     India on each other.
       At least 25,000 people--three-quarters of them Sikhs--were 
     killed in the struggle.
       ``We have not forgotten the insult that was Bluestar and 
     never will,'' says Inderman Singh of the Shiromani Gurdwara 
     Parbandchak Committee, the advisory council of the Golden 
     Temple.
       Gaping cracks and bullet holes can no longer be seen on the 
     walls of the Golden Temple, and renovation of the shrine is 
     almost complete. Its gilded domes gleam in the sunlight, and 
     pilgrims can be seen filing slowly toward the lake that 
     surrounds the shrine to bathe in its holy waters.
       The men are attired in accordance with the five edicts of 
     the faith--with ``Kangha'' (comb), ``kacch'' (shorts), 
     ``Kirpan'' (sword), ``kara'' (steel bracelet) and ``kes'' 
     (uncut hair and beard).
       The repetitive chant of the Granthi, the chief narrator, 
     who recites from the Granth Sahib, the holy book written by 
     Guru Nanak (1469-1539), the founder of Sikhism, reverberates 
     through the entire complex.
       It is barely imaginable that 10 years ago corpses lay 
     strewn in the beautiful courtyard.
       But the conflict simmers on behind the facade of 
     tranquillity. Few Punjabis accept the new Congress state 
     government, which came to power Feb. 19, 1992.
       ``We have to accept that India has defeated our armed 
     struggle,'' says Amarjit Singh, information officer at the 
     Golden Temple. ``But why is it that we are still denied the 
     self-administration and protection of our culture that were 
     promised to us for long, even in these ostensibly peaceful 
     times?''

                       SENATE COMMITTEE MEETINGS

  Title IV of Senate Resolution 4, agreed to by the Senate on February 
4, 1977, calls for establishment of a system for a computerized 
schedule of all meetings and hearings of Senate committees, 
subcommittees, joint committees, and committees of conference. This 
title requires all such committees to notify the Office of the Senate 
Daily Digest--designated by the Rules Committee--of the time, place, 
and purpose of the meetings, when scheduled, and any cancellations or 
changes in the meetings as they occur.
  As an additional procedure along with the computerization of this 
information, the Office of the Senate Daily Digest will prepare this 
information for printing in the Extensions of Remarks section of the 
Congressional Record on Monday and Wednesday of each week.
  Meetings scheduled for Thursday, September 22, 1994, may be found in 
the Daily Digest of today's Record.

                           MEETINGS SCHEDULED

                              SEPTEMBER 23
     11:00 a.m.
       Veterans' Affairs
         Business meeting, to consider the nomination of Kenneth 
           W. Kizer, of California, to be Under Secretary of 
           Veterans Affairs for Health, and other pending calendar 
           business.
                                                            SR-418

                              SEPTEMBER 28
     9:00 a.m.
       Office of Technology Assessment
         Board Meeting, to consider pending business.
                                                   EF-100, Capitol
     10:00 a.m.
       Labor and Human Resources
         To hold hearings on Federal job training programs.
                                                            SD-430
     10:30 a.m.
       Foreign Relations
         To hold hearings on the Convention on the Conservation 
           and Management of Pollock Resources in the Central 
           Bering Sea (Treaty Doc. 103-27).
                                                            SD-419

                              SEPTEMBER 29
     9:30 a.m.
       Energy and Natural Resources
         To hold hearings to examine the Agreement for Cooperation 
           on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy Between the United 
           States and the European Atomic Energy Community 
           (Euratom).
                                                            SD-366

                               OCTOBER 13
     9:30 a.m.
       Governmental Affairs
       Oversight of Government Management Subcommittee
         To hold oversight hearings on the Navy's mismanagement of 
           the sealift tanker contract.
                                                            SD-342