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FOR IMMEDIATE
RELEASE
AHRC-STM-016-2012
January 26, 2012
A Statement from the Asian Human Rights Commission
INDIA: Injustice, an impediment to the republic
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) congratulates
India on its 63rd Republic Day. From a nation that suffered
the brutal consequences of colonisation and the lasting
wounds of separation, for the past 63 years, the country and
its people have brilliantly shown the resilience to hold
close to heart the promise they made more than six decades
ago, to remain a sovereign socialist secular democratic
republic. The Indian experience of democracy is of immense
value in Asia, since for the most of the continent; the
concept has only made cameo appearances.
Despite this, the concept of democracy and republic is
incomplete, as reiterated in the Constitution, unless
justice, liberty and equality are ensured to the people,
without exceptions. The integrity of the nation and the
dignity of its people depend on this. It is in that the
country has to shed its colonial hangovers, and if required
reinvent itself, as a nation where these fundamental notions
implied in the term 'democratic republic' remain not just as
mere words mentioned in the basic law, but realisable
guarantees, for which the state should not spare any of its
resources.
A recent video that was mentioned in the country's media, of
the officers from the Border Security Force (BSF) brutally
assaulting a suspected cross-border cattle smuggler is to
the point. The nationality of the victims apart, such an
incident should not have happened on the first place. That
it happened shows that the country's elite border guards
have no respect to the country's basic law or to their
operative mandate. The video is an exception only to the
extent that it was probably for the first time that such an
act by the BSF stationed along the Indo-Bangladesh border
has been video documented. The AHRC and its partner
organisation based in West Bengal, MASUM, on more than some
800 separate occasions, reported similar incidents to the
authorities, urging them to take action against the BSF
officers, and suggesting that the incessant practice of
manifest forms of custodial violence - ranging from torture
to extra-judicial execution and rape - shows the moral wilt
in the force which in itself is a threat to the security of
the nation. The incident is ample proof to the fact that the
agency today operates in an environment of impunity.
Impunity has no place in a democratic republic.
Despicable forms of impunity are enjoyed not just by the
BSF. Widespread practice of torture by the state police
officers casts a dark shadow upon the very notion of the
republic. The country is yet to wakeup to the reality that
the practice of torture, in its entire manifest forms, is
incompatible with what has been guaranteed in the
Constitution. While a considerable number of people in the
country, including some respectable officers within the
Indian Police Service, reiterate that the present state of
affairs within the law enforcement agencies cannot coexist
with the demands of a modern democratic republic, there is
hardly any debate within the country as to what should be
done to bring about a change to this unacceptable status
quo. Even the country's civil society has ignored to engage
with the subject, but for a few exceptional human rights
organisations, which is a minority, in relation to the large
number of human rights groups that operate in India,
enjoying the relatively free space that the country
guarantees for human rights work. Fair trial guarantees and
the basic presumption of innocence cannot coexist with the
practice of torture.
When the law enforcement agencies become incompatible to
undertake their responsibility according to the demands of a
democratic state, it challenges not only the very concept of
democracy, but also encourages inequality and therefore
injustice. The recent incident reported from Balangir
district, Orissa state of the torching of 40 Dalit houses by
the members of a militant dominant caste is an alarming
reminder to the fact that prejudices based on inequality
still haunts the realisation of the true republic. The fact
that an alarmingly high percentage of children from the
marginalised and minority communities living in the
impoverished rural backdrops of at least five states in the
country do not have, nor do they expect, any hope to be
saved from the certain death due to starvation and
malnutrition reiterates that injustice is the practice
though justice is the guarantee. A country with its law
enforcement agencies enjoying impunity cannot be of any use
to check this injustice.
So is the situation of the country's judiciary. That the
judiciary too, and with that the country's justice framework
has failed, is today no more the 'hyperbole' of human rights
organisations. The country's law minister himself has
reiterated this reality. In a country where its judiciary
cannot expect the prosecution to be capable of assisting the
court in its quest to find the truth, or a court where the
trial can take anywhere between two to ten years to
conclude, or worse, where the judiciary itself can guarantee
that only seventy percent of its judges are honest, justice
has no life. There cannot be percentages awarded to justice.
There can only be either justice or injustice.
The annual remembrance of the day in which the country and
its people declared for themselves a sovereign socialist
secular democratic republic should not remain a day on which
parades are held and speeches made. It must be also a day of
introspection. Of what it implies by the sovereignty of the
people, and by it, to what extent is India truly a
democratic republic.
So far injustice has remained an impediment to the complete
realisation of the republic. Failing to address it is as bad
as undermining the republic.
For information and comments contact:
Bijo Francis
Telephone: +852 - 26986339
Email: indi...@ahrc.asia,
southa...@ahrc.asia
# # #
About AHRC: The Asian Human Rights Commission is a regional non-governmental organisation that monitors human rights in Asia, documents violations and advocates for justice and institutional reform to ensure the protection and promotion of these rights. The Hong Kong-based group was founded in 1984.
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