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Article on approaches to justice for 1984 victims
March 21, 2006 | Comments Off on Article on approaches to justice for 1984 victims
The Indian government continues to deny justice to the victims of the 1984 pogroms of Sikhs. On March 9, Punjab police used water canons to disperse victims protesting the Punjab Deputy Commissioners’ failure to give relief payments to the victims, despite orders by the central government. Nearly a dozen protesters had to be taken to the hospital because of the use of water canons.
After twenty years, the victims of the 1984 pogroms are still waiting for justice. Officially, 2,733 people were killed in the massacres in Delhi alone, but to date, only a handful of people have been convicted. Although Prime Minister Singh apologized last year for the 1984 “riots,” he ignored the complicity of the state in the massacres, and did not promise any concrete action beyond further inquiries and committees, which in the past twenty years have failed to address the victims’ rights to knowledge, justice, and reparation.
Twenty Years of Impunity: The November 1984 Pogroms of Sikhs in India reveals the systematic and organized manner in which state institutions, such as the Delhi Police, and Congress (I) officials perpetrated mass murder in November 1984 and later justified the violence in inquiry proceedings. The report demonstrates that police officers not only passively observed the violence, but also actively participated in the attacks and made promises of impunity to assailants. The report also examines the role of the Congress Party in organizing the massacres, delivering inflammatory speeches instructing attendees to kill Sikhs, and distributing weapons, money, and voter lists identifying Sikhs and their properties. Grave lapses in police investigations, delays in filing cases, the failure to identify and investigate prosecution witnesses, the deliberate misrecording of witness statements, and the failure to comply with legal procedures precluded effective prosecutions against major perpetrators.
A recent article in The Hindu discusses this failure on the part of the government, and suggests that social violence such as the 1984 pogroms require non-conventional approaches to justice.
The retributive justice-oriented legal system has been criticised for deepening the already existing divisions between communities.
Added to this, the material obstacles and the destruction of evidence in the chaos that surrounds violent conflicts make it almost impossible to achieve justice through the legal system. The deliverance of justice becomes even more difficult in situations where institutions of the State endorse violence against specific communities.
Instead, the article suggests “non-conventional” approaches to justice that do more than simply punish the perpetrators of violence.
Countries such as Guatemala, Rwanda, South Africa and East Timor, torn by similar violence, have experimented with diverse approaches, ranging from retribution-oriented criminal justice mechanisms to those that focus on truth telling, reparation and healing. Drawing on insights that transcend cultural variables, India could learn some valuable lessons from the experiences of these countries.
Moving beyond adversarial approach, it should generate processes that facilitate individual and collective healing for the Sikh/ Muslim community, that build relationships across the divisions of conflict, and that address the injustices that took place before, during and after the riots.
Under this approach, victims should participate in deciding what form justice should take to protect their rights to knowledge, justice, and reparation. Truth telling is the foundation of this approach to justice.
When the truth about the nature of the violence is concealed, it further disempowers victims, who feel even more voiceless. Despite the various inquiry panel reports on the 1984 riots, this continues to be the reality for many survivors.
Although it does not rule out incarceration, according to the author, the goals of this approach are healing and reparation.
It includes a wide range of methodologies such as dialogue, acknowledgement of — and accountability for — the harm done, apology, remorse, financial reparation, rehabilitation, reconstruction and psychosocial support and trauma healing.
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