[Assam] (no subject)

[cmahanta at charter.net]

elegraph (Calcutta) Thursday, August 10th 2006
  http://www.telegraphindia.com/archives/archive.html
  TORCHLIGHT ON A BLINDFOLDED FACE
  By trying to keep the truth about missing militants and death squads 
under wraps, the defence establishment is seriously harming the cause of 
peace in Assam, writes Sanjib Baruah
  The author is at the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati and the 
Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi
  Citizens eager to see the return of peace and stability in Assam tend to 
pin their hopes on the likelihood of negotiations between the United 
Liberation Front of Asom and the government of India. However, in the 
long run, two sets of legal proceedings currently under way in Guwahati 
might prove more important for the prospects for peace in Assam.
  A two-member bench of the Guwahati high court with the chief justice, 
B.S. Reddy, and the judge, B.P. Kotoky, has taken up the case of missing 
Ulfa militants turned over by the Bhutanese authorities to the Indian army 
after the Bhutanese army‚s operations in December, 2003. 
Simultaneously, a commission appointed by the Assam government and 
headed by the retired judge, K.N. Saikia, is holding hearings on the secret 
killings between 1998 and 2001 that were ostensibly a part of the 
government‚s counter-insurgency operations. 
  The judiciary should be congratulated for trying hard to create conditions 
conducive to the return of peace to Assam. Unfortunately, the same 
cannot be said of the executive branch ˜ especially the defence 
establishment and a senior Indian police service official. The defence 
ministry has asserted that the list of militants handed over to India by 
Bhutan is a „privileged‰ document that should not be made public, while 
the amicus curiae appointed by the court argues that not making that 
information public will lead to a denial of justice.
  The most significant potential witness who has failed to show up before 
the Saikia commission so far is G.M. Srivastava ˜ Assam‚s inspector 
general of police (operations) during the years when the secret killings 
took place. Now the director general of police in Tripura, he is apparently 
too busy to come to Guwahati and give his deposition. He has proposed a 
date for his deposition that coincides with end of the commission‚s term.
  The potential role of public sentiments in bringing about sustainable 
peace tends to be forgotten when the focus is entirely on the prospect of 
negotiations between the Ulfa and the government. Few would dispute that 
it is important for the government to win the battle for hearts and minds. 
But there is little appreciation of the role that procedural justice could play 
in that battle.
  The Guwahati high court has acted on the case of the missing militants 
as the result of a habeas corpus petition by Shyamoli Gogoi, wife of the 
Ulfa leader, Prakash Gogoi, who was taken captive by the Bhutanese army 
and handed over to the Indian army in December, 2003. 
  In response to the high court, the ministry of defence has sent an affidavit 
signed by the defence secretary, Sekhar Dutt, citing Section 123 of the 
Evidence Act to plead that the list should not be made public. No one is 
permitted under that section to give „evidence derived from unpublished 
official records relating to any affairs of State‰ without permission from the 
head of the department. Making that list public, says the defence ministry, 
would be „detrimental to public interest and state security‰.
  Yet in the battle for the truth, it is hard not to sympathize with the 
sufferings of families of the missing militants or of victims of death squads. 
Viewed against the image of sindur-wearing wives of missing militants 
attending the high court hearings, the defence department‚s claim that 
crucial information that could throw light on the fate of their husbands 
is „privileged‰ seems unjust and inhuman. That even the court-appointed 
amicus curiae, P.K. Goswami, is unconvinced makes the argument seem 
hollow.
  Srivastava‚s disdain for the Saikia commission is equally unhelpful in 
efforts to reassert the legitimacy of the state‚s institutions. Secret killings 
are widely believed to have been a tool of counter-insurgency in Assam ˜ 
they took place with complicity between some police cells and members of 
the Surrendered United Liberation Front of Asom. People‚s abhorrence of 
the terrifying practice led to the defeat in 2001 of the weak and 
compromised Asom Gana Parishad government led by Prafulla Mahanta 
under which the killings had taken place. They contributed to AGP‚s defeat 
even in the elections of this year. Yet, despite the popular mandate to find 
the truth, the Congress government so far has not succeeded in shedding 
much light on the secret killings. The Saikia commission is the third body 
appointed by the state government to investigate them ˜ the earlier two 
commissions failed to unearth much.
  But to the Assamese public it is hard to ignore the living reminders of the 
terror of secret killings. Consider Ananta Kalita, who, with two gunshot 
wounds on his face, bears testimony to a murder attempt by a death 
squad. He was a member the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba Chhatra Parishad ˜
 some of whose members were seen as Ulfa sympathizers. 
  Kalita remembers vividly what followed the dreaded midnight knock on 
the door of his village home on a fateful night in September, 1999. Ten 
armed men dragged him to a vehicle. Even though he was blindfolded, he 
could reconstruct the route that took him from his village to Jorabat on the 
Assam-Meghalaya border. He even remembers feeling the torchlight on 
his face at an army checkpost. To the laughter of his drunk kidnappers, a 
soldier had asked: „Murga mil gaya?‰ After a short uphill drive he was 
dragged out and one of his captors fired a single shot on his cheek. Kalita 
fell over the side of the hill, but survived. He climbed up to the Guwahati-
Shillong road, stopped a vehicle and got to the hospital and lived to tell his 
story.
  More than a hundred people were victims of death squads during 1998-
2001 ˜ many of them close relatives of top Ulfa leaders. Evidently some 
killings were aimed at putting pressure on the top Ulfa leadership at a time 
that the counter-insurgency establishment was frustrated by the Ulfa‚s 
resilience and the fact that its leadership was out of its reach in camps in 
Bhutan and Bangladesh. Among the prominent victims of death squads 
were the brother of the Ulfa chief, Arabinda Rajkhowa, and four relatives of 
the Ulfa‚s then publicity secretary, Mithinga Daimary.
  The Sulfa leader, Jugal Kishore Mahanta, has told the Saikia commission 
that he learnt about secret killings with which his name is associated only 
from newspaper reports. But he did shed light on the murky world in which 
security officials pressured surrendered militants to assist in counter-
insurgency operations. 
  Northeast India‚s insurgencies thrive in the political space created by the 
legitimacy deficit of state institutions. All over the world, reasserting the 
public‚s faith in the rule of law is now seen as a precondition for building 
sustainable peace. Post-conflict justice ˜ mechanisms for making the 
perpetrators of atrocities and crimes accountable ˜ is the principle behind 
the international crimi- nal court and a number of war crime tribunals and 
truth and reconciliation commissions.
  For the public to rally around the state and its institutions, decisions by 
legal authorities do not have to favour the insurgent‚s version of the truth. 
But the procedures for enforcing the law must be seen as just and fair. It 
should not appear as if state institutions and top officials have something 
to hide about the terrible crimes that the public remembers. Without the 
public‚s faith in the rule of law, it is hard to begin the process of peace-
building ˜ the end of violence, the beginning of reconciliation and of 
economic development. Assam cannot be an exception to these 
elementary lessons about peace-building in post-conflict societies learnt by 
the rest of the world.
  The hurdles to discovering the truth about missing militants and the death 
squads put up by the ministry of defence and a senior Indian police official 
could become more formidable obstacles to peace in Assam than the dilly-
dallying on the parts of the Ulfa and the government of India about 
negotiations.