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Third Round Table Conference
By Dr.
Ajay Chrungoo
When
the government made its intention to hold the Third Round
Table Conference in
New Delhi,
it appeared to be in undue haste. Out of the five Working Groups constituted by
Govt. of India during the IInd Round Table Conference held in Srinagar, only
four had submitted their reports. The fifth, and the politically most crucial
group, was yet to complete its work. In fact it was not even half way through
with its agenda. Out of the four Working Groups which had submitted their
reports, the group dealing with Confidence Building Measures headed by
Mr.
Hamid
Ansari (Now the Vice-President of India) had miserably failed to
build the consensus.
Dr.
Agnishekhar who represented Kashmiri Pandits in this group had
dissociated with its recommendations after duly registering his objections. None
of the participants had received the reports of the Working Groups even till
just before
midnight on the eve of the conference. The delegates were
handed over the Working Group reports immediately after the dinner hosted by the
Chief Minister of the
Jammu and Kashmir State, Sh. Ghulam Nabi Azad. The Third Round Table Conference
as per the agenda had to discuss these very reports so that they could be duly
adopted. It was humanly impossible for the delegates even to have a cursory look
on the reports, not to speak of developing a firm opinion on the contents and
the recommendations made. Was it the intention of the Govt. of India not to
allow time to the delegates to evolve a firm opinion? Perhaps the intention of
Govt. of India was to push through the recommendations during the Third Round
Table Conference without a due consideration by the delegates.
I tried to have a look on the
recommendations of the Working Group dealing with the agenda of Confidence
Building Measures. Dr. Agnishekhar had already briefed us about the
deliberations of the Working Group as also his written objections and
observations to the Working Group report. For me to make some opinion about the
recommendations of this Working Group in the short time available appeared
little less daunting. As I went through the contents and recommendations of this
Working Group headed by none other than the eminent Hamid Ansari I was alarmed.
I felt that Govt. of India had embarked on a course of adopting measures for
tackling Kashmir problem which would gradually unhinge not only the sovereignty
of the nation over Jammu and Kashmir but also cripple nation's efforts to defeat
terrorism and separatism. The delay in providing the copies of the reports to
the delegates started assuming a new meaning in my mind. The chairman of the
Working Group on 'Confidence Building Measures' declares on Page 3 of its
report, "The Working Group concerns itself only with the rehabilitation and
improvement of conditions of the militancy victims and did not go deeper into
the causes or the genesis of militancy in the state":. I wondered how the
chairman could devise a framework for helping the victims of militancy without
going into the genesis of militancy. Could any body devise measures to help the
victims without understanding the causes why they were targetted?
Perhaps a more relevant question
which comes to mind is why in the entire report, not once, has the issue of
'terrorism' been mentioned, not to speak of addressing it. Could the victims of
terrorism be helped without addressing the issue of terrorism? The report very
meticulously and deliberately avoids or circumvents the issue of terrorism. And
what is the understanding of the chairman about what constitutes militancy in
the state is reflected very clearly by going through its observations on the--'Measures
to improve the condition of people affected by militancy". The report
observes, "The necessity of curbing human rights violations was stressed by most
members of the Working Group. Emphasis was placed on Prime Minister's assurance
of 'zero tolerance' for human rights violations as on India's international
commitments and international image. It was considered imperative to develop a
mechanism in which responsibility for specific human rights violations can be
fixed and derelict officials identified and proceeded against". The observations
clearly indicate that the report identifies militancy primarily as state
accuses, dereliction or acts of commission and ommission. It does not at all
consider the issue of terrorism as the prime cause of violence in the state. The
report recommends measures to improve the conditions of people affected by
militancy like inculcating Human Rights awareness 'in all civil and military
government functionaries and in the public' and reviewing and revoking of
'certain laws made operational during the period of militancy e.g., Armed Forces
Special Powers Act, Disturbed Area Act".
With this type of understanding
of militancy, advocated by the report of Working Group on 'confidence building
measures across the Segments of Society' in the state we were going to the Third
Round Table Conference. My apprehensions deepened about the entire gamut of
exercises conducted in other Working Groups as well. An attempt seemed to be
afoot to set a course for national policy on Jammu and Kashmir, with serious
implications--international, regional and local. This could be clearly gauged
from the concluding remarks in the same report--
..."It has to be recognized that
the problem of militancy and alienation of some sections of the society has to
be tackled in a very broad framework in this behalf. Central and State
government may consider application of internationally accepted policies in
consultation with experts.
...."An unconditional dialogue
process should be started with militant groups for finding a sustainable
solution to the problem of militancy in the state".
...."The probable role of media
should be examined in generating an image of the people of the State so as to
lessen the indignity and suspicion youth face outside the state..."
Will the delegates in the Third
Round Table Conference be able to grasp and respond to formulation and
recommendations of Working Groups which can harm national interest? Will the
highest at the helm in Govt. of India including the Prime Minister, Home
Minister, National Security Advisor and others attending the Third Round Table
Conference see through any measure or recommendation by the Working Group which
will damage the national cause in Jammu and Kashmir and will they put their foot
down? I had these questions in my mind while I prepared to attend the Third
Round Table Conference. The experience of the deliberations of the Third Round
Table Conference was mixed. Many delegates rose up to the occasion, called a
spade a spade and emphatically cautioned Govt. of India against falling into
trap of such perspectives couched in Worked Group reports as observations or
recommendations which were detrimental to national interests. The deliberations,
did not reflect a unanimous view while the Govt. of India tried hard to ... a
unanimity which could not be arrived at during the conference. However, Govt. of
India role during the conference was far from reassuring. It seemed almost
helpless and in a state of abject surrender to all such views which undermined
and damaged national interests in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. More dismaying
was that many a times Govt. of India looked more eager to facilitate these
views.
Report Submitted by HM Ansari Working Group
is disappointing
by Dr. Ajay Chrungoo
Excerpts of the speech made by Dr. Ajay Chrungoo in the Third Round Table Conference at PM House New Delhi.
"Honourable Prime Minister, Sh. Manmohan Singh Ji, Honourable
Union Home Minister Sh. Shiv Raj Patil, Honourable Chief Minister of Jammu and
Kashmir. Sh Ghulam Nabi Azad, To be frank I was little surprised about the haste
with which this Third Round Table Conference has been convened. You must be
aware that one of the crucial working groups looking into the issue of
strengthening
Centre State
relations has not yet completed its task and is still far away from compiling a
report.”
“The reports of other working groups were submitted to us only
yesterday at around
10
O'clock in the night immediately after the dinner hosted by the Honourable
Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. The participants at IIIrd Round Table
Conference got very little time to study these reports. I hope you will bear
with us if we fall short of responding comprehensively to these reports in this
conference which has been organised to discuss in detail these very reports.”
"Sir I have gone through the report of the Working Group which
addressed the issue of ' Confidence
Building Measures’,
during the little time which was available to me. This group had to specifically
address the issue of Employment and also Rehabilitation of Displaced Kashmiri
Pandits".
"I must say without inhibition
that the report which has been submitted by Mr HM Ansari in this conference is
disappointing. It has failed to address the issues for which this working group
was constituted, in a proper and comprehensive way".
“The report tends to trivialise
substantial issues. Its recommendations are disjointed and many times trespass
the specific agenda which it had to address.”
"The Working Group Chairman has
tended to address the issue of unemployment and rehabilitation of displaced
Kashmiri Pandits divorced from the reasons which lead to the exodus and their
marginalisation from all spheres of life in the state. Sir, take for example the
issue of unemployment amongst the displaced Kashmiri Hindus. There has been
almost a blanket ban on their recruitment in the government services while lakhs
from the majority community have been provided employment under special
employment packages. Former deputy Chief Minister, Pt. Mangat Ram Sharma tried
to bring this issue to the fore by asking the then government that the number of
Kashmiri Pandits in the government services be brought to the level as it
existed in 1989, just before the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from Valley. He
repeated the same issue in the Ist and IInd Round Table Conferences. Your
goodself appointed an interministerial committee which also recommended almost
on similar lines. You yourself put the issue on the national agenda by putting
the issue of employment and rehabilitation as one of the main issues to be
addressed by the working group ‘on confidence building measures’, in the Second
Round Table Conference. You must be aware that immediately after the IInd
Round Table Conference the State government responded not by moving in the
direction of creating an employment package but by making permanent all the
adhoc appointments made in Valley against the posts of the displaced Kashmiri
Hindu employees.”
“Sir, the problem of denial of
employment to Kashmiri Hindus is not a mere callous aberration of the system. It
is a very frank symptom of the process of exclusion unleashed by the communal
forces entrenched in the government and the political establishment. At the
point of gun and terrorist blackmail we were pushed out. Our properties, temples
and shrines were plundered after we left. Hundreds of our temples lie in
shambles after the loot and plunder unleashed on them. Thousands of our houses
have been burnt and destroyed. Leftover properties have been fraudulently
encroached and usurped. Through a process of distress sales our homes and
hearths are being procured as normal sale deeds. I am mentioning these things
only to stress that our physical cleansing was followed by residential
cleansing. And through denial of employment a form of administrative cleansing
of Kahsmiri Hindus has been unleashed. Muslim communal forces in the state
do not want us to stay even in Jammu. They have launched a policy of sequeeze to
force our diaspora and expulsion from the state. Has the working group addressed
these issues? No. To the contrary it has trivalised these issues. The working
group has made recommendations on employment and upgradation of camps only in a
way that further delay and proctastrination is possible. After so many debates
the recommendations of the Working Group still talk about further dialogue and
discussion. Why? Our problems have been bracketed with the problems of those who
have perpetrated violence in Valley? Did the chairman of Working Group look into
the international perspectives and experiences on internal displacements?
Recognising the dire necessity of addressing the issue of internal displacement,
United Nations Human Rights Commission assigned the task to the Representative
of Secretary-General on Internally Displaced persons in 1992. Several years of
study by a group of experts under the auspices of this representative took
place. The Representative on Internally displaced persons after being requested
to develop an appropriate 'Normative framework' recommended drafting of 'guiding
principles’ rather than a convention which he suggested would have taken 10-20
yrs to conclude. Sir, 30 Guiding Principles were spelt out. Did the chairman of
the Working Group look into these guiding principles before making
recommendations for displaced Kashmiri Pandits.”
"Experts of international repute have likened the response to
internal displacement to a tripod, with relief, development and protection each
forming a leg. Sir government response has so far only concerned itself only
with relief aspect and that too in a half hearted way. Concept of protection,
and development is absent from the conceptual framework of the government
approach. So the government response to internal displacement of Kashmiri Hindus
stands almost without legs."
"We cannot devise the concepts of protection, development and
even relief, if we do not try to understand and identify the forces at play in
the state who perpetrated genocide on Kashmiri Hindus and are hell bent upon
their expulsion from the state. The chairman of the Working Group has ignored
this aspect totally. Principle 1 of the Guiding Principles on Internal
Displacement affirm that internally displaced persons enjoy in full equality the
same rights and freedoms under international and domestic law as do other
persons in their country and stresses that such internally displaced persons
shall not be discriminated against in the enjoyment of any rights and freedoms
on the ground that they are displaced. Successive governments have denied
Kashmiri Hindus employment and set into place a process of blatant
discrimination which is the violation of the basic rights and freedoms and the
principle of equality.”
"Sir, in the context of
rehabilitation the successive state governments have followed a policy of
symbolic, coercive return. They have relied on a process of enforced deprivation
and denial to force the Hindus to return and submit to the will of dominant
opinion in the Valley. The State government visualises the return by relocating
the camps in Valley one way or the other. Principle 14 of the Guiding Principles
on Internally Displaced Persons reaffirms the right of every human being to
liberty of movement and freedom to choose his or her residence and then
specifies that for internally displaced persons this includes a right to move
freely in and out of camps and settlements. Successive state governments while
building tenements for displaced persons in certain parts of Valley have ignored
the entire spirit of this principle. Simply creating a set up for persons whose
physical security is under threat at a place only neglects their protection
needs. Relocating camps in such places where their security is threatened and
where they cannot enjoy the basic freedoms can actually exacerbate and
perpetuate their plight. It can create a false sense of security and
international experts have warned against such a situation. They have also
cautioned that such a process can shore up a repressive regime, create a
situation of a long-term dependency and result in creating 'well-fed dead.’
Working Group recommendations appear to be totally ignorant about such
perspectives.”
"Sir, State government attitude on return continues to border
on a perspective of forceful repatriation. We all know how backlash massacres of
Kashmiri Hindus in
Kashmir
Valley were triggered by such return campaigns. International experts have
always stressed to look into the refugee law by analogy while developing a
framework of the return for internally displaced persons. They have stressed the
need to adhere and uphold the principle of non-refoulment which provides
protection for refugees against forced return to a situation where they would be
at risk of persecution or physical harm. The reference in the Working Group
recommendation on return and rehabilitation is devoid of any sensitive
understanding of the critical issues involved.”
“Sir, I have repeatedly come across the views of Muslim
leaders on the displacement of Kashmiri Hindus in the Round Table Conferences
and the Working Group meetings. Today also some of them have spoken on this
issue. They want our return because Kashmiriyat has to be repaired. They want
the return of teachers and doctors because Kashmiri Muslims want them. Always
and everytime when they speak they only discuss Kashmiri Hindus in terms of
their utility. And almost always they avoid to discuss the issue of the
destruction of a community. It is most unfortunate that the Working Group
recommendations emphasise the need to recognise the right of our return and not
to ensure our right to live in
Kashmir.”
"Sir, Kashmiri Pandits have been subjected to genocide. And we
want its comprehensive and permanent reversal. Creation of Panun Kashmir as we
have many times stressed is the only way to ensure such a reversal. Government
wants to avoid to address the basic issue of genocide and deal with peripheral
and superficial issues. It is for these reasons I think that I should not
endorse the recommendations of the Working Group dealing with these issues. And
I feel it my responsibility to dissociate myself from these recommendations.”
"This Working Group has not addressed the issue of Terrorism
at all. In fact it has chosen to describe this heinous crime against humanity as
militancy. Under the heading ‘measures to improve the condition of the victims
of militancy’ the Working Group on confidence building measures recommends
foremost the measures like developing mechanism in which responsibility for
specific human rights violation can be fixed and derelict officials identified
and prosecuted. It appears that the chairman of the Working Group identifies
human rights violation by the government agencies as the foremost concern. It
also appears from the recommendations that the militancy in
Kashmir is primarily the result
of government action or government action is in fact the real militancy in the
state. Terrorism as a human rights issue with all its implications seems to be a
peripheral concern. Another main recommendation under the same head is the
reviewing and revocation of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (Disturbed Areas
Act). It is the primary impingement on the fundamental rights-the report suggests. How terrorism tears
apart the civil society, destroys fundamental freedoms and creates a civil
society which acts as a sanctuary for violence has not been the concern guiding
the recommendations for helping the victims of militancy.”
Sir, we have seen how big powers have used human rights as a
vehicle to intervene and subvert the independence of those countries who came
out of the colonial yoke and won freedom. With imperial motives such countries
devised a selective paradigm of human rights which concerned itself primarily
with state abuse and excesses. It appears our own govt has the same paradigm of
human rights. Entire human rights concern of the government seems to be aimed to
generate a selective state specific sensitivity. It is an apologetic and
masochist approach. Sir, Universal Charter on Human Rights clearly and
unambiguously states that human rights should be upheld by the state, organs of
the society and the individuals. Nothing so far has been done to sensitise the
civil society about the menace of terrorism. There has been no education of the
organs of society whatsoever as to what are the implications when terrorism
takes roots in a civil society. People need to be told why terrorism cannot be
justified whatever be its value basis and motivation. Organs of the society need
to be sensitised so that they mobilise civil society against terrorism. Process
of accountability needs to be created for those organs of society which
legitimise terrorism, glorify it or act as indirect abettors”.
“Government has chosen to fight terrorism tying its one hand.
I am sure if people are adequately educated about the crippling strains
terrorism, generates on the law and order situation it will widen the moral
space for government action against terrorism. The excesses which get committed
during state action will then be placed in proper perspective while government
disciplines its own instruments to stop excesses. In such a way public
over-reaction will be minimised.”
"Sir, the government has time and again talked about the
dangerous situation at the ground created by terrorism. It has talked about
subversion of government agencies by the terrorist sympathisers. It has talked
about the atmosphere of intimidation at the ground. How can local enquiry
commissions operate fairly in such an atmosphere. Can a witness or an evidence
which is in favour of government or security forces muster courage and
voluntarily put forward its views to the enquiry commissions. The security
forces penalised for human rights violations have yet to get a fair trial".
"Sir, the recent campaigns unleashed in
Kashmir valley on custodial
killings, Afzal Guru verdict and demilitarisation are aimed to reduce the moral
space for state action, demonise the state and present Kashmir as an occupied
territory. Out of more than one thousand and five hundred alleged cases of
excesses by the security forces and other government agencies more than 95% have
proven to be false. Have we ever tried to look into as to who rakes up these
false allegations. What is the motivation of such forces? What are their
resources? The campaign on Afzal Guru has been no less than a contempt of
Supreme Court. Why does government prefer to remain as a mute spectator to
overground secessionist campaigns? The working group dealing with issue of
militancy has chosen to broadly ignore these issues. It is intriguing that the
recommendations of the Working Group on confidence building measures emanate
from a paradigm which is alien.”
I have chosen to speak briefly on the recommendations of only
one Working Group for the reasons already explained.
I once again reiterate that I dissociate from the
recommendations of the Working Group on confidence building measures”.
Thank You.
Dr. Ajay Chrungoo
Chairman
Panun Kashmir
Source: Kashmir
Sentinel
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