Feb
15
Reflections on Impunity Panel
February 15, 2004 | 1 Comment
In his article, “Quest for Democracy: Nothing Obsolete About That,” prominent reporter Dilip D’Souza writes about the role of the World Social Forum (Mumbai) in airing alternative opinions and political views. He specifically focuses on the panel, Fighting Impunity in India: Perspectives from Victim Families and Human Rights Defenders, organized by the Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab, and the question it raises about the viability of justice:
One morning, I sat listening to the wife of Jaswant Singh Khalra, the Punjab human rights campaigner who was abducted from his home in September 1995 and has not been seen since.
She was followed by three men from Gujarat who lost family members to the insanity that engulfed that state in 2002. Two Kashmiri lawyers, and two young activists from Nagaland, also spoke.
All told wrenching stories of brutality and the impunity with which the state acts. In none of their cases has anything close to justice been done.
Yet, they were here at the WSF, searching for ideas, strategies, support, in their struggle for that elusive justice. So when I read what Mr Shinde had to say, I could not help remembering Paramjit Kaur Khalra and the others.
I wondered: Is the yearning for justice an “outmoded” idea? When Indians who have watched sisters raped and slaughtered, or husbands taken away and murdered, ask for something as simple as redressal, should we label them empty-headed socialists and decide it’s best to ignore them?
Should we reply that what they are asking for is “okay in theory but no longer viable”? Is justice itself “no longer viable”?
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