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US State Dept. Annual Human Rights Country Report on India
March 4, 2004 | Comments Off on US State Dept. Annual Human Rights Country Report on India
The U.S. Department of State has recently issued the 2003 Human Rights Reports (aka the “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices”). The section on India takes note of the pending issues of unaddressed cases of wide scale disappearances in the early 1990s. The report mentions the CCDP report documenting hundreds of enforced disappearances, Reduced to Ashes, and states:
In Punjab, the pattern of disappearances prevalent in the early 1990s has ended; however, hundreds of police and security officials were not held accountable for serious human rights abuses committed during the counterinsurgency of 1984-94. In June, the Committee for Coordination of Disappearances in Punjab (CCDP), a Punjab-based human rights organization, completed its 634-page report documenting 672 of the “disappearance” cases currently pending before the NHRC. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) claimed to be pursuing actively charges against dozens of police officials implicated in the “mass cremations” in which police in Amritsar, Patti, and Tarn Taran district secretly disposed of approximately 2,000 bodies of suspected militants. The militants were believed to have been abducted, extrajudicially executed, and cremated without the knowledge or consent of their families. Although 6 years have passed since the Supreme Court ordered the NHRC to investigate 2,097 cases of illegal cremation in Punjab’s Amritsar district, by year’s end, no significant progress was made in identifying the cremated bodies or bringing to justice those responsible for the killings.
In July, a key witness in the trial of Punjab police officials who killed human rights monitor Jaswant Singh Khalra was arrested and charged with alleged rape.
No action has been taken against the approximately 100 police officials who were under investigation for abuses committed while suppressing the violent insurgency in Punjab.
On Kashmir, the 2003 Country Report mentions that:
Arbitrary and unlawful deprivations of life by government forces (including deaths in custody and faked “encounter” killings) continued to occur frequently in the State of Jammu and Kashmir and in several northeastern states, where separatist insurgencies continued. Security forces offered bounties for wanted militants. Extrajudicial killings of criminals and suspected criminals by police or prison officers also occurred in a number of states. Militant groups active in Jammu and Kashmir, several northeast states, and parts of Andhra Pradesh, killed members of rival factions, government security forces, government officials, and civilians.
US State Dept. Annual Human Rights Country Report on India …
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