[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 42 (Monday, March 25, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E443-E444]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES IN SIKH NATION

                                 ______


                          HON. PHILIP M. CRANE

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                         Monday, March 25, 1996

  Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recommend to my colleagues 
the video ``Disappearances in Punjab,'' which was provided to my office 
by Dr. Gurmit Singh Aulakh, president of the Council of Khalistan. 
Produced by Hindu human rights activist Ram Narayan Kumar and 
ethnologist Lorenz Skerjanz, ``Disappearances in Punjab'' tells the 
story of Jaswant Singh Khalra, general secretary of the human rights 
wing, who has disappeared and has apparently been abducted by the 
Indian Government.
  Khalra reported the abduction, torture, and murder of as many as 
25,000 young Sikh men whose bodies were then cremated and listed as 
unidentified. Other human rights activists have claimed that as many as 
100,000 Sikhs have been designated as ``disappeared'' by the Indian 
regime. The Indian Government has faced many similar charges before--
including a February 25 article in the New York Times which described 
the Government as ``rotten, corrupt, repressive, an anti-people''--but 
this video provides documented evidence of the brutal violence that 
Sikhs must face every day.
  I hope my colleagues will take the time to review the video, and I am 
inserting a transcript for the Record. The Sikhs have struggled for 
independence and have been repressed by a central government. I support 
independence for Khalistan, and I believe that after reviewing this 
video, my colleagues will as well.

                              Introduction

       On 31 August 1995, Punjab's Chief Minister Beant Singh was 
     assassinated in a suicide mission of bombing carried out by a 
     Sikh militant organization at the State government's 
     Secretariat in Chandigarh. Beant Singh of the Congress party 
     has taken office in early 1992 after winning the elections to 
     the State Legislative Assembly, which the main Sikh political 
     groups had boycotted to pursue their decade long agitation 
     for a radical measure of autonomy for Punjab. As the Sikh 
     electorate, constituting the majority of Punjab's population 
     stayed away from the polling, the Congress party won the 
     elections, without a real contest. But the government formed 
     by the Congress party under Beant Singh's leadership 
     projected the election results as the democratic mandate 
     to stamp out the Sikh agitation, promising to implement 
     the mandate by all possible means. Reports of human rights 
     violations became widespread.
       The leaders of Hindu public opinion in Punjab argued that 
     the due process of law was a luxury, which India could not 
     afford while fighting the secessionist terrorism:
       [Interview with Vijay Chopra, publisher and editor of Hind 
     Samachar group of newspapers, who brings out the three most 
     popular language dailies in northern India.]
       Only the human rights groups and the individuals, with 
     little influence on the working of the government, expressed 
     indignation against the reports of police atrocities.
       [Interview with Satish Jain, Professor of Economics at 
     Jawarharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.]
       Many inside observers of Indian politics, including the 
     former President of India Zail Singh, admitted that the 
     highhanded methods of the security forces, instigated the 
     separatist terrorism.
       [Interview with Zail Singh.]


          historical background of the sikh separatist unrest

       Approximately twenty million Sikhs of India form less than 
     2 percent of the country's population, but constitute 
     majority in the agriculturally prosperous Northwestern 
     province of Punjab, which had been divided between India and 
     Pakistan in 1947. Prosperous Jat Sikh farmers dominated the 
     Akali Dal, the main political party of the orthodox Sikhs, 
     that launched the agitation for the radical measure of 
     autonomy for the State in early 1982. Jarnail Singh 
     Bhindranwale, a charismatic religious preacher, who had 
     already emerged on the scene as the messiah of ``true 
     Sikhs'', rallied the discontented sections of the Sikhs, 
     particularly the unemployed youth, to the Akali agitation. 
     The Union government projected the agitation as a 
     secessionist movement, and refused to negotiate 
     decentralization of political power. The next two years of 
     virulent violence, which also witnessed the rise of Sikh 
     terrorism in the real sense, came to a head in June 1984 when 
     Prime Minister Indira Gandhi ordered the military to flush 
     out Bhindranwale and his armed followers from the Golden 
     Temple of Amritsar in which they had taken shelter. When the 
     operation was over, hundreds of Sikh militants, including 
     Bhindranwale, and a larger number of Sikh pilgrims, were 
     dead. The Akal Takht, an important shrine inside the temple 
     complex regarded as the seat of political authority within 
     the Sikh historical tradition, was rubble. For devout Sikhs, 
     Bhindranwale and his followers, who had died fighting the 
     Indian military, became the martyrs of the faith. A section 
     of Bhindranwale's followers now began to talk of an 
     independent Sikh state.
       The Parliamentary elections held at the end of 1989, 
     returned many extremist candidates under the leadership of 
     Simranjit

[[Page E444]]

     Singh Mann, former police officer turned separatist 
     politician. The results showed that the separatist cause now 
     possessed a measure of popular support. Alienation of the 
     Sikhs of Punjab from India's political system again became 
     manifest when the overwhelming majority of them stayed away 
     from the polling in early 1992, keeping with the call given 
     by the main Akali groups to boycott the elections. The 
     boycott helped the Congress party, under Beant Singh, to form 
     its government in the State, and to embark on a highhanded 
     policy to suppress the Sikh agitation without caring for the 
     limits of the law. Many officials involved in the security 
     operations privately admit that excesses, including custodial 
     killings, do take place. But they argue that they have no 
     other way to demoralize a secessionist movement, which enjoys 
     a measure of sympathy in Punjab's countryside.


                      evidence of state atrocities

       Interviews with Inderjit Singh Jaijee, Chairman, Movement 
     Against State Repression, and Jaspal Singh Dhillon, Chairman, 
     Shiromani Akali Dal's Human Rights Wing. [Photographic 
     evidence of custodial torture and killings.]
       [Interview with Ranjan Lakhanpal, a lawyer who fights 
     generally losing legal battles to enforce the rule of law, 
     against the working of the Punjab police.--Lakhanpal 
     introduces two women victims of custodial rape.]
       Our own investigations in the Amritsar region reveal that 
     the dealings of the security forces with the relatives of 
     separatist militants, themselves unconnected with crime, are 
     not only routinely illegal but also brutal. Apparently, the 
     idea is to set an example of harshness that would discourage 
     the rural folk from sympathizing with the extremist cause.
       [Interview with Arjun Singh, grandfather of a known 
     militant Paramjit Singh Panjwad, tortured in the police 
     custody. Panjwad's mother was killed in custody.]
       Many Sikh officers of the Punjab police privately 
     corroborate these reports of police atrocities.
       [Interview with one woman police officer, on the condition 
     of anonymity: She told us about her experience of custodial 
     torture, rape and murders at an interrogation center she was 
     attached to.--Photographic evidence of custodial torture and 
     murders.]
       Champions of human rights in Punjab are themselves 
     vulnerable to persecution. Many have suffered long periods of 
     illegal detention, torture in custody and even elimination. 
     Sometimes their relatives become victims of police wrath. On 
     29 March 1995, lawyer Ranjan Lakhanpal's ten year old son 
     Ashish was run over by a police vehicle. The vehicle belonged 
     to an officer whom Ranjan has accused of murdering a detainee 
     in custody.


                    the case of jaswant singh khalra

       The more recent example comes from the case of Jaswant 
     Singh Khalra, General Secretary of the Shiromani Akali Dal's 
     Human Rights Wing, who got picked up by uniformed commandos 
     of Punjab police from the porch of his house in Amritsar on 6 
     September 1995, six days after Beant Singh's assassination. 
     Human Rights Wing has been focussing attention on unravelling 
     the mystery of what happens to the large number of people the 
     security forces illegally pick-up for interrogation. Jaswant 
     Singh Khalra was associated with the investigations that led 
     to the discovery that Punjab police have been cremating 
     thousands of dead Sikhs illegally, by mentioning them in the 
     registers at the cremation grounds as ``unclaimed'' and 
     ``unidentified.'' The investigations also established that 
     these ``cremated'' Sikhs were largely those who had earlier 
     been picked up for interrogation.
       [Interview with the attendant of the cremation ground at 
     Patti, a subdivisional town in Amritsar district.]
       Equally incriminating evidence against the police comes 
     from the hospitals where the police sent some bodies so 
     cremated for postmorten.
       [Interview with the Chief Medical Officer of the hospital 
     at Patti: This doctor told us that Sarabjit Singh was still 
     alive when the police first brought him for the postmortem. 
     On being discovered alive, Sarabjit Singh was taken away by 
     the police and brought back to the hospital the second time 
     when he was actually dead. The hospital gave the postmortem 
     report the police wanted. The Chief Medical Officer of the 
     hospital at Patti also offered us some astonishing 
     information on how he helped the police to get the postmortem 
     reports they legally needed in all circumstances before 
     cremating the dead bodies.]
       Investigation carried out by the Human Rights Wing forms 
     the basis of a petition that the Committee for Information 
     and Initiative on Punjab has filed before the Supreme Court 
     of India. The issue of illegal cremations by the Punjab 
     police is now being investigated by the Central Bureau of 
     Investigation, on the orders from the Supreme Court. However, 
     the order of the probe did not come before Jaswant Singh 
     Khalra himself ``disappeared.''
       [Interview with Jaspal Singh Dhillon: ``Khalra was quite 
     clearly told that he can also become an unidentified body. 
     And today Khalra is not there.'']
       The guilty officials of Punjab police knew that, without 
     Khalra's investigative resourcefulness in the Amritsar 
     district, the Human Rights Wing could not have so 
     conclusively exposed their ways of handling the Sikh unrest 
     in Punjab. Khalra had also been providing legal counselling 
     to victims of police atrocities, particularly the relatives 
     of the ``diasppeared'', which encouraged them to approach the 
     courts to redress their grievances.
       Khalra's whereabouts remains unknown. The chief of the 
     Punjab police has categorically denied Khalra's abduction by 
     the officers of his force. The Supreme Court of India has 
     ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe the 
     ``disappearance'' along with the issue of illegal cremations 
     by the Punjab police. In ordering the probe, the court has 
     neither extended protection to witness who might lead to 
     evidence to establish the truth, nor has asked the CBI to 
     associate the human rights groups, directly involved in 
     exposing the police atrocities, with the inquiry. It is 
     evident that the Central Bureau of Investigation, as an 
     investigating agency under the Union Home Ministry, lacks the 
     necessary power and independence to determine the truth of 
     allegations of serious human rights crimes, made against 
     India's security forces.
       Human right groups worldwide are seriously concerned about 
     the disappearance of Jaswant Singh Khalra, which is seen as a 
     warning to all those who are engaged in exposing police 
     atrocities in the State. The Sikh groups in Punjab are 
     agitating the Khalra's release. Many leaders of the Western 
     countries, including the President of the United States of 
     America, have conveyed their concern about the case to the 
     government of India. However, the information percolating 
     from the police sources suggests that Khalra might already 
     have been eliminated. Despair dominates the mood of the Sikh 
     leaders in Punjab.
       [Interview with Sukhjinder Singh, former Akali Minister: 
     ``All Sikhs cannot get one constable or one police officer 
     transferred from one place. That is the situation.'']
       [Interview with Jaspal Singh Dhillon: ``There is no way any 
     Sikh today can look for justice from any organ of the Indian 
     state.'']
       [Interview with Professor Satish Jain: ``There is a large 
     section of this country which approves of State atrocities. 
     And, I think, the weakness of the Indian nation, the weakness 
     of the Indian society, really lies in this attitude.'']
       Will India society rectify this weakness? Will State 
     atrocities in Punjab cease? These are the mute questions 
     before the people of India, even as they prepare themselves 
     for the next elections.

                          ____________________