Burning Punjab News,
Jul 23, 1999

Chandigarh - Committee for co-ordination on disappearances in Punjab has conducted survey on enforced disappearances, arbitrary execution and secret cremations by the state for the past 13-14 years. A team comprising Ram Narayan Kumar, Amrik Singh Mukatsar and Harshinder Singh, while releasing ‘interim report’ here today told mediamen that the document covers 838 incidents of various kind.

These human rights activists claimed that 222 out of 838 incidents belongs to those persons who had either committed suicide or died as the direct consequence of insufferable brief. The report does not include 523 complaints of gross human rights abuses, which the Committee received for submission before the People’s Commission.

Its proceedings have been hampered by a petition before the High Court that seeks a writ of mandamus to restrain the Commission from publicly hearing them. As of now, the High Court has not given its decision, although the arguments on the matter have long been concluded. As a result, the People’s Commission has not been able to proceed with its work. The Committee has also analysed 125 petitions for the writ of habeas corpus, filed on behalf of those who disappeared after police abductions.

The Issues and their History section deals with the political and legal aspects of the Punjab tragedy, as well as its human dimensions. It also makes a summary of the matter of enforced abductions and secret corpse disposal, which the National Human Rights Commission is supposed to be investigating on remit from the Supreme Court In December 1996, the Supreme Court of India referred the matter to the NHRC for a broad and through investigation after the CBI’s inquiry report disclosed "flagrant violation of human rights on a mass scale." However, under the pressure from the forces of impunity, the NHRC has ruled that the investigation would be restricted to "cremations", "the given number of 2097 bodies" and the "location of Amritsar district".

The "flagrant violation of human rights on a mass scale", as confirmed by the CBI’s report and as demonstrated by further evidence we offer, cannot be examined within the straight-jacket of a shrunken scope, which the Commission has imposed on the inquiry to whittle down its meaning in a way that it becomes a travesty. The Supreme Court must recognise that this view of its mandate, which the NHRC has suddenly come up with, is not only untenable against the crying requirements of justice, but is also completely contemptuous of the fundamental legal principles on which this matter stands. The third chapter of the report from pages 83 to 140 discusses the principles, within the Indian constitutional scheme as well as the international human rights regime, which require the Supreme Court to stop the NHRC from destroying its mandate under Article 32.

This report hopes to achieve yet another important aim: the large majority of survivors from the victims’ families do not even care to report the incidents from the conviction that no one can do anything to alleviate the injustice they have suffered. In our estimate, only ten percent of the survivors from the families that suffered enforced disappearances and arbitrary killings have, in any manner, come forward to give reports. That is also the ratio of people who approached the judiciary or other institutions for redress. This leaves about ninety percent of the cases undocumented.

This should be a cause for concern to human rights organisations or simply to those interested in preserving history. The task would require co-ordinated efforts, and a vigorous injection of voluntary initiative in fact-finding. That was the sense behind the formation of the Co-ordination Committee. The bulk of victim-testimonies is coming from people who are old and might not live very long. Most of them are poor and illiterate and do not understand the meaning of "evidence", or the point of recording it. Yet, they are the repositories of that evidence, which, unless quickly collated, risks being lost altogether.

We hope that this report would inspire the human rights groups in Punjab and others interested truth and justice to spare a little bit more time, thought and effort for the work of documentation than it has been possible for them to do so far.

Tribune News Service,
Jul 23, 1999

CHANDIGARH, July 22 = The Committee for Coordination on Disappearances in Punjab, a body formed by various human rights organisations of the state, today released its interim report with regard to enforced disappearances, arbitrary executions and secret cremations. Mr Ram Naryan Kumar, a spokesman of the committee, told a press conference here today that the final report was also being prepared and it would be completed soon.

He said the interim report which was documented on the data collected by the committee's activists on the basis of evidence available with various sources, including victims' families, would be presented before the National Human Rights Commission, which is hearing a case with regard to cremations made by the Punjab Police. The case was referred by the Supreme Court to the commission.

Mr Kumar said the committee had felt that the NHRC had limited the area of investigation by taking up only cremations of the 2097 bodies within Amritsar district. He said by presenting the well-documented report, the committee would plead before the commission to enlarge its area of investigation and do "justice" in this connection.

He said as many as 838 incidents, reports were part of the interim report. The committee was also working on other aspects, including psychological impact, long-term impact on society and judicial attitudes, vis-a-vis, cases pertaining to victims of state repression. Besides all cases of habeas corpus falling in the jurisdiction of the committee would also be studied.

Asked what was the attitude of the Punjab Government towards human rights, Mr Kumar said members of the committee a few weeks ago had gone to meet the Chief Minister after obtaining appointment. But the Chief Minister did not meet them as he was not well on that day. He said the purpose of meeting the Chief Minister was to urge him to make the report public with regard to alleged killing of Gurdev Singh Kanoke in police custody.

He said the report was with the Punjab Government for the past three months, and it was not being made public. Kanoke was allegedly killed about seven years ago and the Punjab Government had ordered an inquiry in this regard.

Quizzed why the release of interim report had been timed with the Lok Sabha elections, he said there was no motive behind this. As the case with regard to secret cremations was going on in the NHRC, the report was required to be prepared as a solid evidence of human rights violations to be presented before the commission.