HRF Monthly

Civil rights and parliamentary oversight of intelligence agencies

/ / HRF Monthly

HRF 225/12 | December 2012

 

Dear Madam/Sir,

There is need for a statutory framework for South Asia’s intelligence agencies to build effective oversight and accountability mechanisms. Whilst national security is highly important to public interest, it is only one of many competing interests to be balanced for effective governance. This paper outlines best practice for regulation of intelligence services in South Asia, acknowledging the difficulty of balancing national security needs with civil liberties guarantees.  It seeks to identify appropriate civil liberties safeguards, whilst maintaining sufficient freedom for intelligence agencies to perform their functions effectively.

It appeared in the December 2012 issue of the South Asia Journal. 

 

2012

Experts on Human Rights Discuss India’s National Report to the UN Human Rights Council

/ / 2012

 

 

 

29, November 2012 | jamiajournal.com

The Maulana Mohammad Ali Jauhar Academy of International Studies organized a panel discussion on “India’s National Report to the UN Human Rights Council” at the Academy’s Hu Chi Minh Conference Hall on Tuesday Nov.  20, 2012.

Besides the director of the Academy, T.C.A. Rangachari, and the panel convener Prof. Jamal M. Moosa, the other three panelists where  Ravi Nair, the Director of South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC);  S. Pal, Member of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC); and  Prof. A.R. Vijapur, Department of Political Science, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).

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2012

Days of the Emergency

/ / 2012

02-12 -2012 | indianexpress

The second half of the 20th century saw civil liberties and human rights threatened around India, especially owing to the Emergency in 1975. In those days, freedom fighter Inder Mohan, also one of the founders of PUCL (Peoples Union for Civil Liberties), wrote fervently in support of people’s rights and liberties.

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HRF Monthly

Ignoring the Disappeared of Kashmir with Impunity

/ / HRF Monthly

HRF/224/12 | 6 November 2012

Dear Madam/Sir,

The blanket refusal by security forces in Jammu and Kashmir to investigate or release the identities of bodies buried in unmarked and mass graves is a gross violation of international law that India has so far been able to commit with impunity. National and international pressure has been found wanting in this regard. Fatigue and helplessness over the persistence of India’s egregious human rights abuses has made such relative silence the norm. Domestic apathy and selective enforcement of international law must be overcome to end such impunity to the violation of human rights.

It appeared in the 10 November 2012 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly.

HRF/224/12 [ PDF ]

 

2012

‘Disappeared’ in Kashmir

/ / 2012

The Dawn | 30th October 2012 | A.G Noorani |

IT is not surprising at all that the chief minister of Indian Kashmir, Omar Abdullah’s written statement on the disappeared persons, in the assembly on Oct 8 should have been received with complete disbelief.

He said, “Till ending July 2012, 2,305 persons have been declared missing.” FIRs were lodged only in 182 cases. In the rest of the cases, “missing reports and complaints have been lodged”.

Sana Altaf of the Srinagar daily Greater Kashmir noted “even after 23 years of armed conflict, no authentic official data exists on the number of disappeared persons in Kashmir valley while successive governments continue to come up with contradictory figures”.

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Reviews of SAHRDC Publications

Review of Challenges to Civil Rights Guarantees in India

/ / Reviews of SAHRDC Publications

The State and Citizenship | Mona Das | The Book Review, October 2012

CHALLENGES TO CIVIL RIGHTS GUARANTEE IN INDIA | By A.G. Noorani

South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre| Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2012, pp. 283

 

Rights delineate relationship between the State and the individual hence; they are some sort of parameters to determine the nature of any State. Individual and group rights, including a gamut of second generation rights called civil and political rights, when guaranteed by a State serve as milestones to mark democratization of society. Advocacy for protection of Civil Rights, in the present era of hegemonic discourses on cross-border terrorism, insurgency, everyday commonplace security threats, is more complex than ever before.

Rights are the smallest price that a Nation State is more than willing to pay in return for security and peace. In this context the book under review is an attempt to empower citizens of India through dissemination of information and educating them on civil rights, as admitted in the preface to the book which quotes Francis Bacon’s aphorism ‘Foreknowledge itself is power’.

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