Quantitative evidence against Indian authorities
Monday marked notable achievements in the human rights world, for Sikhs affected by the Indian government’s abuses in Punjab in the 80s and 90s, as well as in the arena of international criminal justice.
First, Ensaaf recently partnered with Benetech, a technology organization that has created data analysis software to measure whether documented human rights abuses occurred on a systematic, widespread scale or whether they were arbitrary. On Monday, Ensaaf and Benetech’s Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) released their findings.
The report by Ensaaf and HRDAG, Violent Deaths and Enforced Disappearances During the Counterinsurgency in Punjab, India, presents empirical findings suggesting that the intensification of counterinsurgen
cy operations in Punjab in the early 1990s was accompanied by a shift in state violence from targeted lethal human rights violations to systematic enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions, accompanied by mass “illegal cremations.” Indian security officials have dismissed claims of human rights violations as unavoidable “aberrations” during the counterinsurgency against alleged terrorists in Punjab from 1984 to 1995.
“This report challenges explanations by Indian security forces for enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions using more than 20,000 records from independent sources which have been analyzed using statistical methods,” said Romesh Silva, a demographer at HRDAG and co-author of the report. “This scientific analysis reveals that answers given by the government regarding the nature and extent of these violations are implausible given the available evidence. The victims and their families have a right to the truth.” [ensaaf]
Benetech’s software has been used in the past to analyze abuses by the infamous National Civil Police in Guatemala during 36 years of internal armed conflict which killed 200,000 , to provide testimony at the International Criminal Tribunal of Yugoslavia that Slobodan Miloševi”s defense theories were inconsistent with the data in Kosovo, and that the civil war in Perú was much bloodier than the elites in Lima ever imagined.
Fortuitously perhaps, Monday also marked the beginning of the International Criminal Court’s first case. Thomas Lubanga, a Congolese warlord has been accused of using children younger than 15 in the military wing of his party, the Union of Congolese Patriots. [NYT] Lubanga’s trial marks the first case where the use of child soldiers is being prosecuted as a war crime.
Lubanga, wearing a dark suit and red tie, showed no emotion as his lawyer Catherine Mabille said he pleaded not guilty to using children under age 15 as soldiers in the armed wing of his Union of Congolese Patriots political party in 2002-03.
Lubanga’s militia ”recruited, trained and used hundreds of young children to kill, pillage and rape. The children still suffer the consequences of Lubanga’s crimes,” Moreno-Ocampo [the prosecutor] said. [NYT]
2 Responses to “Quantitative evidence against Indian authorities”
The report doesn't accuse India for the Genocide of Sikhs. It pretends that only some fringe Indian Authorities were involved in "illegal killings" of Sikhs but NOT India. It therefore in its principle ignores and conceals the role of India by using ineffective words like Indian Authorities/Government/ Security forces etc without looking that
India imposed it's President's rule on Punjab in October 1983- supported by the parliament of India and by the PM of India as a national policy of Genocide against the Sikhs that included systematic attack on their literature, architecture and people.
Loooking at this statement
Not only this statements distorts the ground reality by obfuscation but It attempts to kill all evidence of Genocide against India by weaseling it as "government". Can there be any justifcation in asking for the answers of a crime from the pepretrator of a crime?
The report is ineffective in principle.
The report doesn’t accuse India for the Genocide of Sikhs. It pretends that only some fringe Indian Authorities were involved in “illegal killings” of Sikhs but NOT India. It therefore in its principle ignores and conceals the role of India by using ineffective words like Indian Authorities/Government/ Security forces etc without looking that
India imposed it’s President’s rule on Punjab in October 1983- supported by the parliament of India and by the PM of India as a national policy of Genocide against the Sikhs that included systematic attack on their literature, architecture and people.
Loooking at this statement
Not only this statements distorts the ground reality by obfuscation but It attempts to kill all evidence of Genocide against India by weaseling it as “government”. Can there be any justifcation in asking for the answers of a crime from the pepretrator of a crime?
The report is ineffective in principle.