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.
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