Sikh Human Rights Abuses

Enforced Disappearances, Arbitrary Executions and Cremations:
Victim Testimony and India's Human Rights Obligations
Interim Report

Introduction
by Ram Narayan Kumar

Dear Friends
The interim report, which will follow as several attachments, concerns one
of the unfinished projects of the Committee. It is a summary and the
exposition of our documentation on enforced disappearances and arbitrary
executions in Punjab, for which the State agencies are responsible. The
introductory part of the report (pages 4 to 36), discusses the issues of
"denial", the requirements and the difficulties of documentation, the
methodological principles underlying our investigations, the analysis of our
findings and the writing of this report.

The documentation includes a survey of 838 Incident-Reports. The complete
list of the sample is included as Appendix G. Some salient points of the
data are highlighted in the note on the survey, which follows the
introductory chapter (pages 37-44). Abstracts from this survey have been
presented as case studies under the title "Victim Testimony: Abstract of
Case Studies"(pages 141-239). It presents ten examples of victimization
under seven categories, including such cases in which close relatives of the
disappeared could not cope with the trauma of incidents. They either
committed suicide or died as the direct consequence of insufferable grief.
Our survey shows that in 222 out of 838 incidents, one or more members of
the families died this way.

The Interim Report also includes further evidence of secret cremations of
corpses, labeled as unidentified, which the Punjab police have carried out
in six districts outside Amritsar. The lists of these cremations are given
as Appendices A-F (Pages 340-272). Some important points about this part of
the research, led by Amrik Singh Muktsar, have been discussed on pages 31 to
35 in the introductory chapter under the subtitle 'Further Evidence of
Secret Cremations'. The fragmented records, included as Appendices A-F, show
illegal cremations of 934 bodies, labeled as unidentified and unclaimed.

The Committee has also analyzed 125 petitions for the writ of habeas corpus,
filed on behalf of those who disappeared after police abductions. All these
cases would form part of a separate study that would aim to examine human
rights abuses, with reference to the legislative apparatus and the judicial
attitudes. These cases are not included in this report.

The report also 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 Issues and their History section (pages 45-140), 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 96, the Supreme Court 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 recognize 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: In our assessment,
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 organizations or simply
to those interested in preserving history. The task would require
coordinated efforts, and a vigorous injection of voluntary initiative in
fact-finding. That was the sense behind the formation of the Coordination
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.

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