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World News
Politicos fanning the flames of terrorism in India
By Keya Acharya
Aug 13, 2008, 10:35
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BANGALORE (IPS) - In the aftermath of
the spate of serial bomb blasts that rocked Ahmedabad in western India
and the southern city of Bangalore, late July, prominent civil rights
activists, advocates and experts have criticised the government, for
political interference in and misuse of the country’s counter-terrorism
laws.
Teesta Setalvad, well-known activist for civil rights for
victims and alleged suspects of terror in India, especially in Gujarat
and Kashmir, says terrorist attacks in India are routinely exploited by
politicians.
"The deep rooted politicisation of India's battle with terror can be
understood by how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the major right
wing party, has used political and religious tensions in Jammu and
Kashmir during electoral battles over the past 20 years, the manner in
which the issue of illegal immigrants, (read Bangladeshis, Muslims) has
been whipped up by them to polarise sentiments and win elections and
now how the issue of recent terror attacks is likely to be used in
future" Setalavad told IPS.
After the blasts in the two cities, both the BJP and the
ruling Congress coalition traded insults and accusations. Lost in the
din was the fact that the series of 21 bomb blasts in Ahmedabad, on
Jul. 26, left 56 people dead. The Bangalore blasts, a day earlier, left
two dead. Political reactions were true to Setalvad’s comment, holding
deep implications to claims by both parties over who provides more
safety and support for India’s minority Muslim populations.
Setalvad also accused the BJP of a ‘symbiotic relationship’ with
violent and fanatic outfits that ‘’generate terror’’, like the Vishwa
Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal, using them to generate communal
divisiveness in states of Gujarat, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, where
the BJP is the locally ruling party.
In India’s sensitive, multi-religious society, the fear psychosis
around bomb blasts are said to have become easy pickings for vested
political interests, while effective legal action to apprehend and
punish those responsible is missing.
Existing counter-terrorism laws in India, stringent and sweeping in
their powers, have a history of being misused. "It is these draconian
laws that are causing terrorism in the country", charges respected
Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan.
India’s first counter-terrorism law, the Terrorist and Disruptive
Activities (Prevention) Act, 1985 (TADA), detained 59,509 people
without charges and managed to convict just 725 of those held. The
overwhelming majority of TADA detainees belonged to religious
minorities, mainly Muslims.
TADA was also controversially used to harass journalists and extorted confessions amongst other misuses.
TADA subsequently collapsed in the face of several arbitrary cases,
amidst opposition by the BJP in 1995 which then went on to create yet
another harsh law in its place, the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA)
2002. This too was flagrantly misused because of its similarity to
TADA’s sweeping police powers.
Controversial and high-profile cases under POTA have involved an
academic and two opposition party politicians, both subsequently
acquitted for lack of evidence.
The highest number of POTA cases were registered not in
Kashmir or the northeastern states where armed insurgencies were
active, but in the central Indian, tribal-dominated State of Jharkand,
where POTA arrests included, a 12-year old boy and an 84-year-old man.
In Gujarat, barring one individual, all POTA detainees were Muslim and
most arrests by the earlier law, TADA, were made in this state which
had no record of terrorism till the brutal Hindu-Muslim riots in 2002.
Advocate Bhushan says the large-scale misuse of both TADA and POTA,
especially in Gujarat have ‘turned normal people into terrorists’. "If
police officers kill innocent people in fake encounters and if this and
other misuse happens on a large scale, then the inevitable consequence
of that is to turn ordinary people into terrorists", Bhushan told IPS.
Bhushan points to Iraq as an illustrative international example, where
stringent laws and total control by the military ‘without any
accountability’ have aggravated its citizens so much that it is now the
‘worse-affected terrorism-country in the world’.
In Tamil Nadu, POTA was used as a political weapon for arresting
opposition politician, Vaiko (one name) for his praise of the Sri
Lankan ‘Tamil Tiger’ rebels, while in the northern State of Uttar
Pradesh it was used against dalits, the lowest group in India’s social
rung.
Though POTA too has now been annulled, India’s Unlawful Activities
Prevention Act (UAPA), amended in 2004 is now, yet again, being misused
by the authorities in their bid to apprehend the culprits of the
Bangalore and Ahmedabad blasts, charged by the government as being
members of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).
Last fortnight, a Delhi High Court special tribunal outlawed the
government’s banning of SIMI, on grounds of insufficient clinching
evidence of the organisation’s current terrorist actitivites. India’s
Home Ministry has since obtained a Supreme Court time-bound stay on the
tribunal’s judgement to produce concrete evidence of SIMI’s
terrorist-activities by September 2008.
A former Indian anti-terrorism squad chief, K.P.S. Raghuvanshi, has
been reported saying that SIMI executes jobs for the Lashkar-e-Toiba, a
militant organisation based in Pakistan, but the government has not
been able to back that charge with solid evidence in several terror
cases in recent years.
"I don’t think any law will have the slightest effect on curbing
terrorism,’’ Maja Daruwala, director of the Commonwealth Human Rights
Initiative in India, told IPS, " Not unless the entire network of
agencies involved in preventing, investigating and apprehending
terrorism is substantially improved. "
Given that the Indian police have practically no training in forensics,
are currently more adept at VIP (very important people) security than
scientific investigation and have just one central forensic laboratory
in India, the possibility of good investigation seems remote.
"If the average policing is anything to go by, the police depend mostly
on tip-offs, they appear to have no other means at their disposal,’’
says Daruwala.
Daruwala says the police need to be " de-politicised, held to a
professional standard and given internal management systems that are
run on competent technology and skills, not on patronage’’. "The
deeprooted politicisation of India’s intelligence agencies in all
blasts investigations has succeeded in investigations not leading to
the guilty", says Setalvad.
Unfortunately for India, says Daruwala, there is ‘arrant disregard’ of
good suggestions by politicians and bureaucrats alike who use the
police force as a ‘tool for wielding power’.
Daruwala says as many as seven Supreme Court recommendations
on institutional reform in the police sector have either been diluted
or ‘subverted’ by the relevant authorities.
All three experts, Daruwala, Setalvad and Bhushan say that India needs to urgently address the root cause of terrorism.
Daruwala thinks the system has to get streamlined so that ordinary
people get quick, efficient justice. " We need change right down to the
core", commented Daruwala.
(link to source)
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