HRF Monthly

India adrift on its Myanmar Policy

/ / HRF Monthly

September 7, 2017

It is clear that the Chinese have a better appreciation of what the ground situation is in Myanmar. The difference is in long term policy formulated by sagacious mandarins in Beijing and the establishment in New Delhi

The Ministry of External Affairs statement of August 26, titled ‘Situation in Rakhine State of Myanmar’ gave the plot away prior to the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Myanmar from September 5-7, 2017. “India is seriously concerned by reports of renewed violence and attacks by terrorists in northern Rakhine State Myanmar. We are deeply saddened at the loss of lives among members of the Myanmar security forces…..” the statement said.

In the joint statement issued by India and Myanmar on September 6, the previous formulation is repeated. “India condemned the recent terrorist attacks in northern Rakhine State, wherein several members of the Myanmar security forces lost their lives.”

Nothing about the enormity of the humanitarian crisis, nothing about the continuing refugee flow into Bangladesh and the miniscule earlier spillover into India.

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HRF Monthly

Historian who got it wrong

/ / HRF Monthly

Historian who got it wrong
The right course would have been for Army HQ to have reprimanded Major Gogoi, and his superiors who lauded his offence. Section 46 of the Army Act, 1950, penalises “disgraceful conduct of a cruel, indecent or unnatural kind”.

June 17, 2017

Arjun Subramaniam is an accomplished military historian. His defence of Major Nitin Leetul Gogoi and General Bipin Rawat’s comments does his scholarship little credit (‘What they don’t get’, IE, June 15). Credible accounts state that Farooq Ahmad Dar was paraded over several kilometres, strapped to a jeep with a placard identifying him as a stone-pelter, accompanied by a warning against stone-pelters, over a loudspeaker.

It is nobody’s case that the Indian army is not a disciplined army, with a rigorous chain of command and an esprit de corps. However, there is evidence of aberrations. The right course would have been for Army HQ to have reprimanded Major Gogoi, and his superiors who lauded his offence. Section 46 of the Army Act, 1950, penalises “disgraceful conduct of a cruel, indecent or unnatural kind”.

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HRF Monthly

Smoke and Mirrors: India’s Human Rights report at the UN

/ / HRF Monthly

Smoke and Mirrors: India’s Human Rights report at the UN

he final conclusions of UPR on India, like all such reviews, need to be read not in cold print, but between the lines
May 24, 2017

The career Indian diplomat is a grandmaster in the art of obfuscation. However, the mendacity of the submissions by the Indian delegation during the examination of India’s record during the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of its human rights record convinced only the naïve back home – and some duplicitous governments in the United Nations.

The final conclusions of UPR on India, like all such reviews, need to be read not in cold print, but between the lines. At the outset, it must be remembered that when it comes to the implementation of universal rights and norms on human rights, the “United Nations” must in fact be read in reverse – it is “Nations United”, countries against their peoples. Most would rather ignore their populations’ clamour for accountability and rights. This, in spite of the valiant efforts of the present UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the under-resourced but intrepid UN Human Rights machinery. Most governments do the human rights tango only when it suits their expedient geo-political realities.

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HRF Monthly

Striking An Own Goal: The NHRC Submission to the United Nations

/ / HRF Monthly

Striking An Own Goal: The NHRC Submission to the United Nations
Saturday, May 27,2017

NEW DELHI: The submission of the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) to the recently concluded Universal Periodic Review (UPR) of the United Nations is a classic.

Written in a format that would do little credit to a high school student, it symbolizes the deep rot in the NHRC. Bad English, faulty sentence construction, a profusion of unexplained, un-elaborated acronyms, and worst of all, bereft of substance – the quality the submission is a matter of shame, an indication of how seriously the NHRC took its duty of setting out the picture of human rights in this country.

On to the NHRC’s submission to the UPR. Recommendation 4 is as follows: “The legal system continues to be dysfunctional with slow disposal of cases and inordinate delay in giving finality to both criminal and civil litigation.”

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HRF Monthly

Pellet Guns in Kashmir: The Lethal Use of “Non-Lethal” Weapons

/ / HRF Monthly

Pellet Guns in Kashmir:

The Lethal Use of “Non-Lethal” Weapons

21/07/2016

The use of pellet guns in Kashmir is a clear violation of human rights and humanitarian law – and needs to be banned immediately.

The government of India and the state government of Kashmir must immediately order their police forces to immediately stop using pellet guns and the lethal cartridges that they use. Any further usage of such weapons, which have caused extensive, arbitrary deaths and grievous wounds, would be not just callous, but a criminal act.

Since July 9, 2016, in the aftermath of the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen leader Burhan Wani, large scale protests and funeral gatherings have been taking place across the Kashmir Valley. The apparently indiscriminate use of allegedly “non-lethal” weapons like pellet guns to control crowds has resulted in 43 civilians having lost their lives so far. Hundreds have been blinded and a few thousand injured.

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2016

Violence call key to ‘sedition’

/ / 2016

Violence call key to ‘sedition’

New Delhi, Feb. 17: Words, whether spoken or shouted, that question or even malign the government cannot be labelled as sedition, unless they specifically incite violence, lawyers and human rights experts familiar with fundamental rights and sedition laws have said.

The experts say courts hearing allegations of sedition would be expected to analyse the context and intent to determine whether actions claimed by the prosecution as sedition fit its definition under the Indian Penal Code#(IPC) and various Supreme Court rulings.

Under Section 124A of the IPC, “whoever by words…. or by signs or visible representation or otherwise brings or attempts to bring into hatred, contempt or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards the government established by law in India” may be punished. The section defines disaffection as “disloyalty and all feelings of enmity”, but clarifies that comments that express even strong disapproval of government actions through lawful means without exciting or attempting to excite hatred, contempt, or disaffection are not an offence.

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