[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 195 (Friday, December 8, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2319]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



               E X T E N S I O N S   O F   R E M A R K S


[[Page E 2319]]


   CONGRESS WRITES TO BOUTROS GHALI ABOUT INDIAN REPRESSION OF SIKHS

                                 ______


                           HON. WALLY HERGER

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, December 7, 1995

  Mr. HERGER. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to note that a letter has been 
sent to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, the Secretary General of the United 
Nations, demanding that the United Nations get involved in seeking the 
release of Jaswant Singh Khalra, the Indian human rights activist who 
was kidnapped by the police outside his house in Amritsar on September 
6. Here it is early December and his whereabouts are still unknown. Mr. 
Khalra was kidnapped after publishing a report which showed that the 
Indian regime had kidnapped more than 25,000 young Sikh men, tortured 
them, murdered them, then declared their bodies unidentified and 
cremated them. The police chief of Tarn Taran, Ajit S. Sandhu, 
reportedly told Mr. Khalra, ``We made 25,000 disappear. It would not be 
hard to make one more disappear.'' Amnesty International reports that 
for this threat, Mr. Sandhu was recently transferred to another 
district. Transfer is the most severe punishment a police official 
faces.
  As Amnesty International said in its report entitled ``Determining 
the fate of the disappeared in Punjab,'' ``Punjab police have been 
allowed to commit human rights violations with impunity.''
  Recently, the United Nations spoke out strongly against the 
executions of nine political activists in Nigeria. That was the right 
thing to do. People should not be killed or abducted and tortured for 
expressing political opinions or for exposing abuses of the rights of 
others. Yet the United Nations has not spoken up against the illegal 
detention of Mr. Khalra, the ongoing illegal detention of more than 
70,000 other Sikhs under a repressive, expired law known as Tada, which 
has been discussed in this House many times, or any of India's massive 
abuses of the fundamental human rights of Sikhs and other minorities. 
This is the same United Nations, by the way, under whose auspices 
President Clinton is sending 20,000 Americans to keep a very fragile 
peace in Bosnia. Why won't the Secretary General speak out against 
human rights abuses in India, one of the most oppressive and corrupt 
countries in the world? Is it because India falsely claims to be a 
``democracy''?
  It is time for the United Nations to condemn human rights violations 
in India as it does so effectively around the world.

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