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Tytler May Change Minister Portfolio
July 2, 2004 | Comments Off on Tytler May Change Minister Portfolio
Jagdish Tytler, the current Minister of State for NRI Affairs, may not stay long in this position. Witnesses and survivors of the 1984 pogroms of Sikhs have consistently named Tytler as one of the organizers and perpetrators of the massacres. The Nanavati Commission investigating the massacres has also issued a Section 8B notice against Tytler, warning him that the Inquiry Report will “prejudicially affect” his reputation. Thus, the likelihood of protests from Sikhs abroad, and the Opposition, whenever Tytler travels, have raised the possibility that Tytler will be given another portfolio. He will still, however, retain a ministerial position despite his role in the massacres.
ENSAAF has just released a report on the 1984 massacres. Twenty Years of Impunity: The November 1984 Pogroms of Sikhs in India, analyzes thousands of pages of previously unavailable affidavits, government records and arguments submitted to the 1985 Misra Commission, established to examine the Sikh Massacres in Delhi, Kanpur, and Bokaro. After a thorough discussion of administrative and judicial impunity, the report applies the international law of genocide and crimes against humanity to the pogroms, relating the massacres with international understandings of gross violations of human rights. The report proposes steps to redress the survivors’ rights to knowledge, justice and reparation.
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