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Report of the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders

21 February 2012, 8:36 pm

Margaret Sekaggya, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights Defenders, following her Mission to India about one year ago, issued a summary statement in January 2011. Her report was completed and placed before the UN General Assembly about two weeks ago. It’s available now at this location:

http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Issues/Defenders/A-HRC-19-55-Add1.pdf

The entire report is worth reading. Below is the last section of the report, the recommendations. Among other things, it calls for the repeal of the AFSPA, UAPA, KPSA and CSPSA.

B. Recommendations

1. Recommendations for the consideration of the central and state Governments, and the legislature

137. The highest authorities at the central and state levels should publicly acknowledge the importance and legitimacy of the work of human rights defenders, i.e. anyone who, “individually and in association with others, … promote[s] and … strive[s] for the protection and realization of human rights and fundamental freedoms at the national and international levels” (art. 1 of the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders).

138. Specific attention must be given by all authorities to the categories of human rights defenders mentioned in the present report, in particular defenders working on rights of marginalized groups, including Dalits and Adivasis; defenders working on economic, social and cultural rights; defenders affected by security legislations and militarization; Right to Information activists; journalists; and women defenders and defenders working on women and child rights.

139. A comprehensive, adequately resourced protection programme for human rights defenders and witnesses at the central and state levels and in conjunction with the National and State Human Rights Commissions should be devised. This programme could be funded by the State, but should not be closely controlled by the State apparatus. In particular, it should not be associated with State agencies, such as the police, security agencies and the military.7 The process for applying for protective measures provided under such a programme should be cost-free, simple and fast, and immediate protection should be granted while the risk situation of the person is being assessed. When assessing the risk situation of a defender or witness, the specificities of his/her profile pertaining to caste, gender and ethnic, indigenous and/or religious affiliation, inter alia, should be systematically taken into account. Finally, the personnel assigned to the protection of defenders or witnesses should not gather information for intelligence purposes.

140. Security forces should be clearly instructed to respect the work and the rights and fundamental freedoms of human rights defenders, especially the categories of defenders mentioned in the present report.

141. Sensitization training to security forces on the role and activities of human rights defenders should be significantly strengthened as a matter of priority, with technical advice and assistance from relevant United Nations entities, NGOs and other partners.

142. Prompt, thorough and impartial investigations on violations committed against human rights defenders should be conducted, and perpetrators should be prosecuted, on a systematic basis. Fair and effective remedies should be available to victims, including those for obtaining compensation.

143. The Supreme Court judgment on police reform should be fully implemented in line with international standards, in particular at the state level.

144. A law on the protection of human rights defenders, with an emphasis on defenders facing greater risks, developed in full and meaningful consultation with civil society and on the basis of technical advice from relevant United Nations entities, should be enacted.

145. The National Security Act, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, the Unlawful Activities Act, the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act and the Chhattisgargh Public Safety Act should be repealed. Other security legislations should be reviewed in the light of international human rights standards.

146. The Foreign Contribution Regulation Act should be critically reviewed or repealed.

147. The Draft Bill on Prevention Against Torture should be adopted without further delay.

148. Necessary steps should be taken to recognize the competence of United Nations human rights treaty bodies to receive individual complaints, which will provide human rights defenders an opportunity to access another procedure to address violation of their rights.

149. The functioning of the National Human Rights Commission should be reviewed with a view to strengthening it by, inter alia, increasing its capacity to improve its case-handling function; broadening the selection criteria for the appointment of the Chair; diversifying the composition of the Commission, including regarding gender; extending the one-year limitation clause; and establishing an independent committee in charge of investigating allegations of violations by State agents. The Human Rights Act should be amended as necessary in full and meaningful consultation with civil society.

150. State Human Rights Commissions should be established in states where such commissions are not yet in existence. The capacity-building and resources of existing Commissions should be reinforced.

151. Central and state Governments should continue collaborating with Special Procedures of the Human Rights Council.

2. Recommendations for the consideration of the national and existing state human rights commissions

152. Wherever relevant, current or former members of the police, security agencies and the military serving in the National Human Rights Commission or the State Human Rights Commissions should not be involved in any part of investigations into

allegations of human rights violations by State actors, as they may have political and ideological allegiances to the accused implicated in the case and may have the capacity to influence the outcome.

153. The supportive role of the Commissions for human rights defenders should be strengthened by inter alia, conducting regular regional visits; meeting human rights defenders in difficulty or at risk; undertaking trial observations of cases of human rights defenders wherever appropriate; denouncing publicly on a regular basis violations against defenders and impunity. The defenders focal point should play a leading role in that regard. This focal point should be a member of the Commission, and have a human rights defender background to fully understand the challenges faced by defenders. A fast-track procedure for defenders within the National Human Rights Commission and State Human Rights Commissions should be considered.

154. The visibility of the commissions should be enhanced through regular, proactive and meaningful engagement with civil society and the media.

155. A toll-free 24-hour emergency hotline for human rights defenders should be established and widely publicized. Such a hotline should be available in the main languages spoken in India.

156. The National Human Rights Commission should intervene on the issue of the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act and should monitor the denial of registration and permission to receive foreign funding for NGOs, with a view to amending or repealing the bill.

157. The Commissions should monitor the full implementation by India of recommendations made by United Nations human rights mechanisms, including special procedure mandate-holders, treaty bodies and the universal periodic review. Such a monitoring role should apply to the recommendations contained in this report.

158. The statutory commissions should be allocated adequate human and financial resources to fully carry out their mandates.

3. Recommendations for the consideration of the judiciary

159. The judiciary should be vigilant and cognizant of the role of human rights defenders.

160. The judiciary should take proactive measures to ensure the protection of human rights defenders at risk, witnesses and victims.

161. The judiciary should ensure better utilization of suo motu whenever cases of violation against human rights defenders arise.

4. Recommendations for the consideration of human rights defenders

162. Platforms or networks aimed at informing and protecting defenders, facilitating dialogue and coordination among defenders should be devised or strengthened.

163. Defenders should better acquaint themselves with the Declaration on Human Rights Defenders.

164. Efforts should be made to continue making full use of United Nations special procedures and other international human rights mechanisms when reporting on human rights violations.

5. Recommendations for the consideration of the international community and donors

165. The situation of human rights defenders, in particular the most targeted and vulnerable ones, should be continually monitored and support for their work should be expressed through, inter alia, interventions before central and state institutions.

166. Efforts should be intensified in empowering civil society, including by increasing their capacity.

6. Recommendations for the consideration of all stakeholders

167. The Declaration on Human Rights Defenders should be translated into the main local languages and widely disseminated.

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The need for global action

15 February 2012, 7:50 am

By Vinay Bhat

Time Magazine termed “The Protestor” as the person of the year in 2011. Protests in the middle-east overthrew tyrants; the Occupy Movement held the world’s attention spreading like wildfire and Europe was ablaze against austerity measures imposed. Clawing their way through, facing bullets, batons and pepper spray, the protestor influenced global change and made the world stand up to take notice. It wasn’t that the establishment wasn’t prepared for this level of an uproar, but had more to do with the fact that no amount of preparation can subdue the voices when they reach this decibel and in unison. As the Occupy movement has beautifully phrased this – “You can’t evict an idea whose time has come”. Yet there are millions of other voices which have not attained the chorus to cause the fundamental changes they would like to see.

The complete article is at this link:

http://twocircles.net/2012feb15/need_global_action.html

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Suffering and helpless: Soni Sori’s letters

13 February 2012, 6:17 am

By Umang Kumar

Soni Sori, an adivasi schoolteacher from Chattisgarh, who was arrested from Delhi in Oct. 2011 for alleged Maoist links has had to suffer one humiliation after another. She had alleged sexual abuse and stones being inserted in her private parts by the Chattisgarh police in the most recent case of atrocity against her.

The mineral-rich state of Chattisgarh has in the last few years seen a vicious conflict over endeavors to extract the minerals by private corporations as well as the Indian state, the indigenous tribal population (the adivasis) whose lands happen to be those same mineral-rich areas and a radical insurgency, whose members are often termed Maoists.

Read the complete article here.

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Letters to God, letters to Supreme (Court) Judges

10 February 2012, 8:23 am

Umang Kumar

It will be fair to assume that we all remember writing – or thinking of writing – a letter to God at some point in our lives, typically when quite young. Those were letters of various kinds but more often than not they encapsulated our acute feelings whose redress we had not been able to obtain from other sources. They were often in the nature of requests or registered some feeling of grave injustice for which we were convinced that we had to make a personal appeal to the highest arbiter or wish-granter. We often had profound unanswered questions, questions that we had turned over in our own heads endlessly but found no earthly answers to give us any comfort. We were totally at a loss and did not know what else to do or who else to turn to. So we finally decided to write to the Supreme Being, the One who was supposed to know all reasons for things that went terribly wrong and have all the answers.

Soni Sori’s letters from her incarceration, most recently to Supreme Court judges, seem to be in similar vein: pained, stupefied missives seeking some answers to what she has been through, to seek even the most basic explanation possible. There are times when the entirety of one’s life experience is not enough to provide one with any insight into what one is overtaken by. Then all one can do is issue a plea for help soliciting some answers. The stupefaction is complete.

Such is the state that Soni displays: a complete incomprehension of why she finds herself in the current situation, among the people who previously tormented her. So much so that she asks the judge, “Why did you give me a new lease of life then? You should have left me to die,” referring to the fact that she was provided life-giving medical attention in Kolkata upon the court’s order but then handed back to the very people among whom she had been tortured. She prefers death to the continued threat her life has been in. That should tell us something about the trauma she has been subjected to already.

But despite undergoing reprehensible treatment at the hand of the state, notice her simple-minded and sincere gratitude towards the judicial system: “I live, thanks to your order, which I’ll never forget,” she tells the judge she addresses the letter to. She feels a certain welling gratitude towards a part of the very state that is also after her limb and life. It is possible her adivasi values inform her to give thanks where she can, to not see an all-pervasive evil in the systems around her. However that same life-giver, that Supreme mai-baap, also causes her utter befuddlement: how could the very institution that ordered her treatment that saved her life suddenly forget how her life was endangered and feign complete ignorance of circumstances by entrusting her back to the people who caused her pain? She expresses herself plaintively thus: “But the esteemed Court had more faith in the police than in their daughter and because of that, I have lost everything today. The Court still doesn’t understand…”

Daughter! She refers to herself as “their daughter,” trying, in her naivete and idealism, to claim some sort of socio-cultural role under which women are accorded respect as being either daughters or sisters. “This is a plea from a helpless daughter,” she repeats in the next paragraph. The reader wonders why she is doing this, why is she debasing herself by trying to invoke familial relationships with an institution and a state that has no interest in her, for whom she is party to the “gravest internal threat to the country,” for whom, she, an adivasi and a woman, of limited means and influence at that, has no claim to any close relationships; she is probably no more than a case number in a court-system to be dealt with “in accordance with law.” Her tormentors, the other upholders of law and order in the state have already told her as much and much worse:“[Y]ou are a whore, a bitch…What’s your status anyways, you think the big stalwarts will support such an ordinary woman like you[?]”. Soni’s spirit does not seem to be crushed so easily by the vulgarity and depravity she has been subject to. She still feels she can make appeals to an impersonal, insensitive, uncaring system as a daughter to a father figure…

But her questions rack her like the pain that is also constantly with her: “Why this injustice to me? Giving electric shocks, stripping me naked, shoving stones inside me – is this going to solve the Naxal problem?” “Sir Judge, my body is in great pain,” the proud adivasi teacher from the “Gandhian school Rukmani Kanya Ashram, Dimripa” is forced to admit to the “Sir Judge,” the “Judge Sahab.” But no amount of Gandhian virtues and principles of non-violence can mitigate her pain. There is no great ideal of satyagraha that she can invoke. All she can do is send out these cries of help. As if to God, her last hope. But as she too realizes, even Krishna did not come to her aid, as he did for Draupadi.

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India: Prosecute Security Forces for Torture

31 January 2012, 8:13 am

From Human Rights Watch:

Recent Abuse Cases Reinforce Need to Enact Prevention of Torture Bill

JANUARY 31, 2012

(New York) – The Indian government should prosecute members of the security forces for recent high-profile cases of torture, to send a message that such practices will no longer be tolerated, Human Rights Watch said today.

Border Security Force (BSF) soldiers, long implicated in torture and extrajudicial killings near the border with Bangladesh, were captured in a video posted on YouTube brutally beating a Bangladeshi national caught smuggling cattle in West Bengal state. And the Indian government has awarded a medal to a police superintendant alleged to have ordered the torture and sexual assault of a female schoolteacher in Chhattisgarh state, instead of investigating him.

“These horrific images of torture on video show what rights groups have long documented: that India’s Border Security Force is out of control,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The Indian government is well aware of killings and torture at the border, but has never prosecuted the troops responsible. This video provides a clear test case of whether the security forces are above the law in India.”

In December 2010, Human Rights Watch, together with Banglar Manabadhikar Suraksha Mancha (MASUM), a Kolkatta-based nongovernmental organization that posted the video, and Dhaka-based Odhikar, published “‘Trigger Happy’: Excessive Use of Force by Indian Troops at the Bangladesh Border.” This report documented numerous cases of indiscriminate use of force, arbitrary detention, torture, and killings by the BSF, and highlighted the failure of the Indian government to conduct adequate investigations or prosecute troops responsible for abuses. It showed that the BSF routinely abuses both Bangladeshi and Indian nationals residing in the border area. After the report’s release, the Indian government ordered an end to the use of lethal force cease except in cases of self-defense. While the number of killings decreased, allegations of killings and torture have continued.

The video, reportedly filmed by a BSF soldier, shows members of the BSF’s 105th Battalion stripping a man, a Bangladeshi national later identified as Habibur Rahman Sheikh, tying him up and beating him, while laughing and engaging in verbal abuse. BSF personnel apparently caught Sheikh when he was engaged in smuggling cattle from India into Bangladesh. Instead of handing him over to the police as required by Indian law, they illegally detained and tortured him and then left him to make his way back home.

After MASUM released the video to local news channels, the BSF suspended eight soldiers – Sandip Kumar, Dhananjay Roy, Sunil Kumar Yadav, Suresh Chandra, Anand Kumar, Victor, Amarjyoti, and VirendraTiwari – and ordered an inquiry. However, despite clear evidence of abuse, to date no criminal charges have been filed against any soldiers.

“Whenever offenses attributed to the BSF occur, its leadership insists that there will be an internal inquiry and action taken,” said Ganguly. “But secret proceedings and suspensions or transfers won’t end the abuses. Torture is a serious crime that should be prosecuted in the courts.”

Many people routinely move back and forth across the Indian-Bangladeshi border to visit relatives, buy supplies, and look for jobs. Some engage in criminal activities, such as smuggling. The BSF is charged with intercepting illegal activities, especially narcotics smuggling, human trafficking for sex work, and transporting fake currency and explosives. It is also charged with protecting against violent attacks by militant groups.

The failure of the Indian government to prosecute authorities responsible for torture extends to all of the security forces, Human Rights Watch said. In another recent disturbing incident, Soni Sori, a schoolteacher in Chhattisgarh state, alleged that she was tortured and sexually assaulted by Chhattisgarh state police while in custody in October 2011. After her arrest as a suspected Maoist supporter, a criminal court in Chhattisgarh state handed her over to police custody for interrogation despite her pleas that she feared for her safety and life. Sori alleges that Ankit Garg, then-superintendent of police for Dantewada district, ordered the torture and sexual assault. The Indian Supreme Court ordered Sori’s transfer to the Kolkata medical college hospital for an independent medical examination. In November 2011, the examination report corroborated Sori’s allegations of physical abuse.

To date, the Indian authorities have not initiated any inquiry or criminal action against the police officers implicated. Instead of investigating the case, on Republic Day, January 26, 2012, the president of India, Pratibha Patil, presented Ankit Garg with a police medal for gallantry. The medal drew widespread condemnation.

The Indian government announced, in March 2011, a rape compensation package for all sexual assault victims, but even basic follow-up reproductive and sexual health services have yet to be made available to survivors like Soni Sori. One of her lawyers told Human Rights Watch that Sori, who is detained in Raipur central jail in Chhattisgarh, has not received any follow-up reproductive and sexual health care. Her hemoglobin count has dropped considerably and she has complained of reproductive health problems but her lawyer is concerned that she will not receive adequate medical care without obstruction by the Chhattisgarh police. During her stay at the Raipur medical college hospital for medical examination and treatment in October, the Chhattisgarh police forced the doctors to remove her intravenous drip, refusing to let her stay in the hospital.

“Soni Sori’s case epitomizes the callousness with which victims of torture are treated in India,” Ganguly said. “The Indian government shamefully presents a trophy to someone implicated in torture, while doctors cannot even treat a torture survivor without police obstruction.”

Human Rights Watch called upon the Indian government to ratify the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and to enact the Prevention of Torture bill, which is currently awaiting cabinet approval and before it is voted on by the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament. The law should override all provisions of Indian law that allow government officials immunity from prosecution for human rights violations. It should also ensure that adequate time is given for victims to be able to file complaints, and that all forms of inhuman and degrading treatment are brought under the purview of the law.

“The BSF, the police, and other members of the security forces operate with impunity throughout India,” said Ganguly. “When will the government in Delhi wake up and act to end torture and other human rights abuses?”

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