[Congressional Record Volume 148, Number 114 (Wednesday, September 11, 2002)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1550-E1551]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




INDIAN INTELLIGENCE PROMOTING TERRORISM IN U.S., WORLDWIDE--INFILTRATES 
               ORGANIZATIONS, CREATES TERRORIST INCIDENTS

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. EDOLPHUS TOWNS

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                     Wednesday, September 11, 2002

  Mr. TOWNS. Mr. Speaker, a recent intelligence report states that 
there are 25,000 agents of the Indian government's ``Research and 
Analysis Wing'' (RAW) outside India. While there is nothing wrong with 
legitimate intelligence work, RAW habitually infiltrates organizations 
of minority groups and creates terrorist incidents in order to 
discredit these groups.
  The Indian government has recently been declared a violator of 
religious freedom by the United States government. On January 2, 
columnist Tony Blankley reported in the Washington Times that India is 
sponsoring cross-border terrorism in the Pakistani province of Sindh. 
This comes at a time when President Musharraf of Pakistan is actively 
helping us in the war against terrorism, at substantial risk to himself 
personally and politically.
  The organizations Babbar Khalsa International (BKI) and the 
International Sikh Youth Federation (ISYF) have been identified by the 
U.S. government as ``terrorist organizations.'' The ISYF has been 
banned in Canada. These organizations have been heavily infiltrated by 
the Indian government, to the point that they are government-controlled 
organizations. They have spawned other organizations designed to 
embarrass the Sikhs, especially those in the Khalistan freedom 
movement, and blame them for terrorism.
  The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is another organization 
that our government has labelled ``terrorist.'' Yet journalist Tavleen 
Singh of India Today, India's leading newsmagazine, reported that the 
Indian government itself created the LTTE and put up its leaders at the 
most upscale hotel in Delhi. If LTTE is a terrorist organization, then 
India created its terrorism.
  In November 1994, the Indian newspaper Hitavada reported that the 
Indian government paid the governor of Punjab, the late Surendra Nath, 
the equivalent of $1.5 billion to foment terrorist activity in Punjab, 
Khalistan, and in neighboring Kashmir. In a country where half the 
population lives below the international poverty line, the supposedly 
democratic government could afford to lay out one and a half billion 
dollars to create state-sponsored terrorism. I'm sorry, Mr. Speaker, 
but I don't understand how that could happen in a democracy.
  Also in 1994, our own State Department reported that the Indian 
government paid out more than 41,000 cash bounties to police officers 
for killing Sikhs. One of them killed a three-year-old boy and received 
a bounty for that! A report from the Human Rights Wing showed that at 
least 25,000 Sikhs were arrested, tortured, murdered, and cremated, 
then their bodies were declared ``unidentified'' and cremated. Two 
reports, one from the International Human Rights Organization (IHRO) 
and the other jointly issued by the Movement Against State Repression 
(MASR) and the Punjab Human Rights Organization (PHRO), showed that 
Indian forces carried out the massacre of 35 Sikhs in Chithisinghpora 
in Kashmir in March 2000.
  In the excellent book Soft Target, journalists Brian McAndrew of the 
Toronto Star and Zuhair Kashmeri of the Toronto Globe and Mail prove 
that the Indian government itself carried out the bombing of an Air 
India airliner in 1985, killing 329 people, then blamed the Sikhs. 
There is too much good information in this book to quote here, but I 
would like to quote one statement from the Canadian State Investigative 
Service which appears in the book: ``If you really want to clear the 
incidents quickly, take vans down to the Indian High Commission and the 
consulates in Toronto and Vancouver, load everybody up and take them 
down for questioning. We know it and they know it that they are 
involved.''
  Mr. Speaker, this ongoing pattern of terrorism against its neighbors 
and against the minority peoples living within its borders shows that 
India's claim to be a secular democracy and an opponent of terrorism is 
a lie.

[[Page E1551]]

India should be declared a terrorist state and subjected to appropriate 
penalties. These should include a cutoff of U.S. aid to India until the 
terrorism stops and human rights are fully enjoyed by all people within 
the country. And we should declare our support for the freedom 
movements seeking their freedom from India. By doing these things, we 
will advance the fight against terrorism in the world and help all 
people to enjoy the basic democratic right of self-determination.
  As former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell said, ``the essence 
of democracy is the right to self-determination.'' It is time for real 
democracy in India rather than a continued campaign of terrorism.

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