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The Beacon of Human Rights

With the US embassy in India preparing a paper on attacks against Christians for the State Department's Human Rights Bureau, it's time for a dekko at American (non-intern) affairs... Last year, on reading Rediff's report on the State Department's India Report on Human Rights Practices for 1997, one bit had piqued my curiosity: It was the suggestion that while India had been singled out for criticism, Pakistan had been accorded "kid glove treatment." Actually, the accusation was rather unwarranted: After burning the midnight oil over reports on several US-friendly trouble-spots, it became apparent that India wasn't the Chosen One. In fact, Pakistan got as much of a whipping as us, and its report was larger than the Indian one.

All of which is neither here nor there. For the question that irks me -- one that'll instantly be shot down by our pointy-headed intellectuals -- is: Why should any country submit its buttocks to this ritualised flogging by Uncle Sam...?

The recurring refrains in the report involve: Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch being barred from visiting J&K and the Northeast; the government's statement on the liability of the army in the death of activists; and the "virtual impunity" granted to Indian security forces by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the National Security Act of 1980 and the J&K Public Safety Act of 1978. In effect, these charges seek to make transparent to the US, India's methods of countering terrorism and subversion.

I don't get it. Do we go around demanding access to the Pentagon's classified files? Is the State Department to advise India on what laws Parliament must pass?

What mystified me even more were the passages on "increased abuses by pro-government counter-militants" in J&K. As the report itself explains, counter-militants are former separatists who've surrendered to the government, but retain their paramilitary features. Government agencies fund, exchange intelligence with, and direct their operations as part of the anti-terrorism effort. Kashmiri ex-separatists check roadblocks and guard extensive areas of the Valley from attacks by pro-Pakistan militants.

So why are these former separatists an evil thing? Because "pro-Government counter-militants may have committed 100 to 200 extra-judicial killings in J&K during the year. In sponsoring and condoning counter-militant activity, which takes place outside the legal system, the government cannot avoid responsibility for killings, abductions, and other abuses committed by these irregulars."

Ah! Now I see! It's sooo different from the judicial killings of Iraqi civilians, no? What was it... yes, American missiles were launched to counter Saddam's militant activities... How are these ongoing attacks within the international legal system? Which government is accepting responsibility for the civic carnage in Iraq? Do Iraqis want Saddam to be deposed?

Thing is, the Kashmiri counter-militant isn't like the Latin American guerrilla -- whose loyalty was purchased with drugs judicially supplied by the US. Also, Kashmiri irregulars and the Indian government have only each other to fall back on. I mean, India can hardly expect white folk to help out: What the Butler did, and who judicially used UNSCOM, are hardly moot points.

To continue, Indian security forces "commit serious violations of humanitarian law in the *disputed* state of J&K," and the "Muslim majority population in the Kashmir valley suffers from the repressive tactics" perpetrated by them. To illustrate this, the report notes the case of three leaders of the Hizbul Mujahaddin (*terrorist* group) who were arrested in Srinagar by the Special Operations Group of J&K -- and who were later found sleeping with the fish.

What am I missing...? For, my instant reaction was, Good show, hope they pulled some teeth first. Considering that it's the few remaining Pandits who are still undergoing ethnic cleansing at the hands of Islamists, how much repression can the Indian forces have exerted, anyway?

Then there's the issue of illegal immigrants, so hotly blocked -- till now -- by our secular glee club. The report admits that there's "encroachment on tribal land in almost all the states of eastern India, including by illegal immigrants from Bangladesh... Such violations have given rise to numerous tribal movements demanding protection of land and property rights. The Jharkhand Movement in Bihar and Orissa, and the Bodo Movement in Assam, reflect deep economic and social grievances among indigenous people." One would naturally speculate, what could be the logical and *legal* solution to halt illegal migration?

You'll not believe it: "More than 100,000 Buddhist Chakma refugees live in uncertainty over their futures in Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. About 40,000 in Arunachal live under the threat of deportation following a series of acts of student-led agitation against their presence in the state. Human rights activists alleged that the government forcibly repatriated 5,000 to 6,000 Jumma refugees from the eastern state of Tripura to Bangladesh in March, despite evidence that they would face reprisals there..."

(Now that the CPI-M itself has acknowledged the infiltration and subversive activities of Pakistan's ISI along the porous NE border, the problem should abate: No longer will our pinko press see anything evil in halting illegal immigration [though it's possible many activists will be out of jobs]. Buddhadev Bhattacharya now admits that the situation has "surpassed all limits," that the state can no longer afford to absorb foreigners, that illegals repatriated from Bombay last year were Bangladeshis. If you remember, Vir Sanghvi's civilised Bongs had attacked Maharashtra's police escort and helped the deportees to escape.)

Keeping in mind the State Department's India report, it's hilarious to read what Amnesty International records about the US government: "It has been reluctant to submit itself to international human rights law and to accept the same minimum standards for its own conduct that it demands from other countries" (sounds like the nuclear issue?). Here are just a few of the many charges against the US government:

* Using the UN and the International Court of Justice when it serves America's purposes, and ignoring them when it doesn't. (In 1979, the US sued Iran in the ICJ when US diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran. In 1983, it refused to recognise the ICJ's jurisdiction when Nicaragua condemned US-sponsored military actions against the Sandinista government.)

* Refusing to criticise human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians, and turning a blind eye to violations in (oil-rich) Saudi Arabia.

* Changing its HR attitude due to political considerations. (In the '80s, Iraqi forces massacred thousands of Kurds, sometimes using chemical weapons; Amnesty repeatedly appealed for action -- in vain. But, after Iraq invaded [oil-rich] Kuwait, US attitude changed dramatically: It then cited Iraq's HR record to gather support for UN military intervention.)

* Executing foreign nationals in violation of international standards. (Paraguayan Angel Breard was denied assistance from consular officials, a right guaranteed under the Vienna Convention. The ICJ ruled on April 9, 1998 that his execution be suspended until consideration. Breard was executed five days later.)

* Challenging the primacy of international HR laws by citing the supremacy of US law, even though US law falls short of some minimum standards set down in HR treaties. (The US allows death penalty against juvenile offenders.)

* Refusing to endorse the treaty on the abolishment of landmines -- signed by 133 nations, including every major US ally.

* Lagging behind the rest of the developed world in failing to ratify the key instrument on women's rights.

* Being virtually alone in the world in failing to ratify the children's rights convention. (It also blocked efforts to end the use of child soldiers).

* Subjecting refugees to inhuman and degrading conditions, including denial of bail and access to lawyers, strip-searches, shackling, solitary confinement, and verbal/physical abuse -- in violation of standards laid down by the UN High Commission for Refugees.

* Disenfranchising convicted felons, including over one million who have completed their sentences. (No other democratic country denies as many people -- in absolute or proportional terms -- the right to vote.)

* Failing to halt police brutality against racial and ethnic groups, and subjecting minorities to discriminatory treatment...

So, this Beacon of Human Rights is about to prepare a chargesheet against India... But why's it so attentive to atrocities against some Indians when it had ignored the many Kurds? Well, secular US has a long pro-Christian history. But let's not stretch back through the centuries. Let's talk Vietnam...

Space constraints prevent touching on Ho Chi Minh, the Japanese Occupation, Emperor Bao Dai, etc. To severely compress the tale, the native Viet Minh finally defeated the US-supported French colonialists in North Vietnam. Though the victors assured religious freedom to all, US paramilitary teams instigated a migration of Catholic Vietnamese to the south through an extremely intensive psychological warfare operation. For instance, Lt Tom Dooley spun yarns of the Viet Minh disemboweling pregnant women, beating naked priests on the testicles with bamboo clubs, and jamming chopsticks into the ears of children to keep them from hearing the word of God. Dooley's reputation remained clean till 1979, when his ties to the CIA were revealed during a Roman Catholic sainthood investigation.

Washington's Catholic lobbies and the Vatican's man in the US, Cardinal Spellman, set to scheme to prevent elections which would've brought the pinkos to power in the south, too. Spellman, who called US forces in Vietnam "Soldiers of Christ," bears responsibility for manipulating the US into the moral morass of Vietnam: The first proprietary name ever applied to the phenomenon was "Spellman's War." The plan had the full support of Pope Pius XII. Thus was the fanatic Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem installed as president of South Vietnam.

By 1956, Ngo Diem promulgated an ordinance to confine to concentration camps "individuals considered dangerous to the national defence," whereby thousands of Buddhists were imprisoned. In protest, dozens of monks incinerated themselves. Soon, the prison camps turned into death camps. Between 1955 and 1960, at least 24,000 people were wounded, 80,000 executed, 275,000 tortured, and 500,000 sent to the camps...

To support this Christian government, America sent GI's to war... Gore Vidal said of President Kennedy: "He tries a war in Laos, and he can't get anybody interested in Laos. And then suddenly, there's Vietnam, where we can stand tall. So, it was largely due, in part to his father and Cardinal Spellman, who are in with the Diem family -- Roman Catholics who ran Vietnam -- we began to send..."

Look, I have horns, scales and antennae. I eat cockroaches. But, though I certainly do not endorse a ban on conversions and the harassment of minorities, the Gandhians and the VHP have a point. It is the same one I've stated in In the name of the Lord: "Politics in the garb of religion is a fact of life: As Jomo Kenyatta said in Absurdities in the name of Religion, 'When the missionaries arrived, the Africans had the land and the missionaries had the Bible. They taught us to pray with our eyes closed. When we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible'."

The Beacon's interest in Hindu atrocities... hmm... Today, just as it agrees with our pinkos' agenda, it serves the Christian World's purpose to further roil the waters for the present government. For, that eases the possibility of India's next prime minister to be a European...

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