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By Schona Jolly,
16th-20th January 2004.
Mumbai.
Amidst the spectacle of Dalit dancing troupes, tribal Adivasis marching alongside burgundy-robed Tibetan monks, unfurling 50 metre long banners, which were being signed by thousands of well-wishers from India and across the world, some voices remain unheard.
The colour and carnival of Mumbai 2004 may have made front-page news, or at least spectacular pictures, in some of the global media, but many of the important issues did not figure. That would come as no surprise, since it is inconvenient for the world's largest democracies, and those who aspire to "install" democracy around the world, to remember that India, the so-called biggest democracy of them all, is not functioning.
Through the clamour of banging drums and the stomping feet of an estimated 150,000 people, some of those individuals worst affected by the Indian state's tolerance of impunity stepped forward to illustrate how the arm of impunity has extended across all levels of the power-wielding forces in India; from the judiciary through to the actions of the Indian Army, and from those high-ranking ministers accused openly of participation in pre-orchestrated genocidal plans, to the police forces, violent suppression of minorities has continued since India's independence. The rise in right-wing fundamentalism is quietly, and often publicly, endorsed. The effects have devastated lives, and generations.
With dignity, and often with little more than tremor in their voices, men and women from Punjab, Gujarat, Kashmir and Nagaland came forward to tell their tales to those who would listen. Amongst them sat lawyers, activists and fellow human beings, those who had tried to, and continue to push their cases for justice. India's free press reported none of these stories. It is unlikely that any mainstream newspaper in Europe or the US has repeated these aspects of the WSF either.
It is hard to imagine how any human being can fail to be humbled by hearing a father recount to strangers how his son was rounded up onto a terrace, with 33 other boys in Ahmedabad, the Gujarati capital's centre; he named individual police officers, with responsibility chains leading as high as the police chief himself. He described the scene as each boy was told to strip, and then bend down. He described, in painful detail, the beatings each boy received mercilessly with the lathi, the Indian police baton, behind the knees, across the elbows until the boys pleaded for relief, whereupon three of them, his son included, was shot dead.
It is impossible to hear eye witness testimony, where women, after they had been herded into cul-de-sacs and kerosene poured on them from the roofs of inner city houses, lit matches sailing down through the air, until the women, their clothes and skin on fire, ran into the waiting arms of police officers and mob packs, to be brutally gang-raped.
How does one believe in a Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian God, when a man describes the assurances of safety given by the Chief of Police; just five minutes after he leaves, the onslaught intensifies and hundreds of men, women and children are killed, whilst the police block the entrances out of the housing colonies. The man standing before us, his hands slightly shaking as he looked blankly at the makeshift tent walls into which we were all crammed, has lost ten members of his family to this mass murder, including his wife and brother. He personally pulled 58 bodies out of water tanks, their skin and bones crumbled from the effects of a white powder, which was thrown from bags and bottles across the entire Gujarati state. Many people mentioned that chemical concoction. It appears to have rapidly increased the rate of burning, so that the victims were stripped of any physical dignity by the time they finally lay dead. The man, timid and unused to public speaking, recounted his story with little emotion and glazed eyes. He has said these words many times. Those police officers are still walking free. In this same massacre, a woman, 9 months' pregnant, was savaged, her womb ripped open, the foetus speared onto a pole and paraded.
Even as refugee camps, for those whose lives and livelihoods were destroyed, continue to be closed down by threats from the Gujarati authorities, and the suffering and anguish is perpetuated by the rumours that those who led the mutilating mobs will be rewarded by promotions, within the police forces or the State prosecution team, Prime Minister Vajpayee said publicly last week that it was "time to move on from Gujarat". A British Law Lord has considered that Gujarat is an "embarrassment", since the effect of the massacre has been to discourage international investment in the State. In other words, the Indian government, and those in big business want the world to forget Gujarat,
Like Punjab has been forgotten. Like Nagaland. Even the daily victims of Kashmir no longer make headline news. It's old hat. But what is this if not State-sanctioned terrorism in the world's largest democracy How can India's allies, and even India's people accept this impunity so easily
Jaswant Singh Khalra, a human rights activist in Punjab, estimated that 25,000 people had "disappeared" in Punjab in the decade following the 1984 riots. His widow stood up at in Bombay this week and told her audience that the authorities had told him that if 25,000 had been killed, another one person would make little difference. He, too, has been "disappeared". Mass cremation grounds, one containing at least 2097 bodies have been found in Amritsar district. Attempts to bring these cases to justice, both before the Indian National Human Rights Commission, and even the Supreme Court, have been blocked or hampered at every level.
Where is the UN, or the USA and its British allies Why is there no international outcry against India, as that which rightfully followed the unearthing of mass graves in Iraq, following Saddam Hussein's ousting
Perhaps realism counts after all. A Guardian journalist told me he was the only British mainstream reporter at the WSF. The media conspires, perhaps unwittingly, but nevertheless remains a silent partner in the pledge to keep public noses out of India's affairs. India remains an important trading partner for the UK, Israel and the US: Indeed, as the Indo-Pakistan crisis reached rocket point shortly after September 11th 2001, Mr Blair was selling British fighter jets to Prime Minister Vajpayee; at the time, the deal was barely mentioned in the British media. The US simultaneously was busy increasing its own arms' sales and aid to Pakistan, to further its own "war on terror". The question is not unique, it has been asked many times over the last 2 years, but it remains as relevant as ever: Where does terrorism begin and end Does it stop being terrorism where one of the parties considers itself to be a democracy
A Kashmiri activist, 26 years old and frail, described 13 years of life in death. His words lasted just two minutes, coming after the powerful testimonies of the Punjabi and Gujarati genocides. He asked only: "Please be human. Give us a right to live. Our womenfolk are raped daily. Our men are taken. There are no young men in Kashmiri homes, just young boys and old folk. We are not asking for even freedom of expression, or for the right to strike. We want the right to live, to peace. We hear of people who tear foetuses from wombs - where is their humanity They cannot be human beings."
Listening to these testimonies, I hung my own head in shame. Even my own tears stung with the knowledge that I could move on, if I chose to, as urged by Vajpayee, and all those whose short memories serve them well.
Each of these eye witness accounts included lists of names. Justice is there to be had, heard and handed over, if only the machinery of State can be persuaded. The problem lies undoubtedly in the small, yet significant fact that those lists would include cogs in that sluggish, yet violent power wheel.
The word "victim" connotes an inability to take care of oneself. Someone who has fallen out of society, labelled helpless. We all need to reclaim space for those families who have suffered needlessly, whose lives have been destroyed by State machinery, and national and international indifference. We must not forget these people, nor must we allow our leaders to forget. We cannot move on until there is justice, and that truly involves the whole world community.
Indira Jaisingh, senior Supreme Court advocate in New Delhi who has been fighting many of these cases, summed up one of those WMF sessions by saying that it was hard to know whether to choose optimism or gloom when hearing these stories. Although she chose optimism, as she must for it is the only way in which justice can be sought, the people living in Punjab, Gujarat, Nagaland and Kashmir simply cannot choose optimism, for they have none. As terror has torn their societies apart, their communities continue to live in trauma. Young men wield the guns of revenge, bringing their adolescent toys into our cities.
Complacency will be the final nail in our own coffins too.
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