27 March 2002
The Washington Post
By Rama Lakshmi
NEW DELHI, March 26 – The Indian Parliament passed a tough and controversial anti-terrorism bill today in a rare joint session of the body’s two houses, turning aside protests by opposition members that the bill undermines civil rights and could be used to target the country’s 140 million Muslims.
The law, championed in the raucous session by the Hindu nationalist government of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, gives the police broad powers to detain and try terror suspects, intercept their telephone and Internet communications and clamp down on their funding. Authorities have been exercising such powers by decree since October and now will get them permanently.
Home Minister L.K. Advani said India had been fighting a proxy terror war for nearly two decades, a reference to battles against separatist movements in the states of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir. He said the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States and an assault on India’s Parliament in December by a team of gunmen made it all the more imperative to pass a tough new law.
“We have lost more men in this war against terrorism than we have in our wars against Pakistan,” Advani said in Parliament. Indian forces have largely quelled separatist efforts by Sikh militants in Punjab but continue to fight Muslim guerrillas in Kashmir.
India enacted an anti-terror law in 1985 after the Punjab conflict began; about 76,000 people were arrested under that measure. It was repealed in 1995 after a campaign by human rights activists and Muslim leaders who said it had been grossly misused to harass Indian Muslims.
The new bill, the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance, allows authorities to detain a person for 180 days without filing charges and denies access to witnesses for cross-examination.
The law also facilitates the use of intercepted communications as evidence in court. Advani pointed out that wireless intercepts played a big role in helping police nab the men involved in the attack on Parliament.
Critics say that under the law, the burden of proof is on the accused and there is no mandatory right to compensation for those detained and later found not guilty.
“Because it lets you lock up a person and throw the key away, the police [are] going to abuse the new law,” said Ravi Nair, director of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center in New Delhi. “People don’t want this bill because of their earlier experience with the anti-terrorism law and its abuse. They don’t want a police state.”
The bill was rejected last week by the upper house, in which Vajpayee’s coalition lacks a majority. That led the coalition to call a joint session of Parliament, only the third since India became independent in 1947. When the two houses vote as one, the coalition has an overall majority.
In a bitter debate that lasted eight hours, the sharpest attack came from the country’s opposition leader, Sonia Gandhi of the Congress party. She said recent sectarian violence in the western state of Gujarat that killed more than 700 people showed that the government wants to “arm itself with the menacing power of [the bill] to promote its divisive ideology.
“The law itself is threatening and it becomes even more so in the hands of this government,” Gandhi added, warning Vajpayee not to bend to pressure from allies in Hindu radical groups. “They are projecting the issue of national security as a partisan tool of propaganda.”
Since October, 123 people have been detained under the temporary decree. The government recently withdrew the use of the decree against 62 Muslims after accusations of selective implementation against adherents of that religion.
Vajpayee took strong exception to Gandhi’s language and said he was “pained by her personal attack on me.”
Before presenting the bill today, the government removed controversial provisions that required journalists to disclose information about terrorist groups and their activities.