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Twenty Years of Impunity: November 1984
December 2, 2004 | Comments Off on Twenty Years of Impunity: November 1984
On the twentieth anniversary of the 1984 pogroms of Sikhs, leading international human rights organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued statements against the impunity granted to perpetrators of the massacres. Human Rights Watch stated:
“The time for commissions that do not lead to prosecutions is over,” said Adams. “After two decades, the prosecutors and police should act. There is more than enough evidence to do so now.”
Human Rights Watch called for an end to political protection for organizers of the violence. Some of those allegedly involved in the pogrom currently occupy posts in the government or are members of parliament. Both the judiciary and administrative inquiry commissions have failed to hold these perpetrators accountable.
“For two decades high-ranking members of the Congress party have enjoyed political impunity for this violence,” said Adams. “The fact that many of the alleged planners of the violence were and are members of the Congress party should not be a barrier to justice for the victims.”
HRW also commended ENSAAF for its report, Twenty Years of Impunity.
Senior Supreme court advocate Indira Jaising stressed in an editorial that the Gujarat pogroms occurred because of the impunity granted to the perpetrators of the 1984 massacres:
To charge people with murder and nothing more fails to point the finger to the real accused. It does not address the issue of constitutional responsibility for preventing such killings. Although what happened in ’84 was not described as “genocide”, that is what it was. Our legal system failed to answer the question: what is the constitutional and personal responsibility of the head of state for mass killings?…
Surprisingly, in situations of mass killings and disappearances it has proved easier to get justice in societies which have been governed by military regimes — take the case of Argentina — than in a democracy like India. This leads me to conclude that the illusion of justice that we in live with is more dangerous than the absence of it. Or is illusion perhaps a necessary component of our democracy that sustains our politicians in power?
BBC has provided flashbacks by 8 survivors of the massacres. The Times of India also provided an index of recent reporting on the 1984 massacres. One article recounts the experiences of reporter Rahul Bedi, responding to the massacres in Trilokpuri:
Dark are the images that haunt Bedi. “It was concentrated in a very, very small area. There was nothing on the street but body parts, hair, clothes … People were shrieking … And there was an all-pervading stink of decaying flesh. We were literally walking on our toes to avoid stepping on some body.”…
That was just the beginning of the horrors for Bedi. The next shock came when he discovered that this mayhem was no act of madness of the mob, but a calculated move. “There seemed to be a very precise method to the massacre.
“Firstly, the entire area around Trilokpuri was blocked off by placing huge water pipes strategically across the approach roads. The local residents were checking everybody coming in and out.
“Secondly, whilst the massacre was on, I saw two policemen on a motorcycle coming out of the area. They obviously had not anything to stop the murder. Nor did they call for reinforcements.”
The Nanavati Commission, the latest commission investigating the 1984 pogroms, asked for a two month extension till December 31 to file its report.
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