SUSPICION seems to be the umbrella explanation and excuse for State-sponsored murder and suppression of civil liberties. In London – the Brazilian electrician de Menezies was a ‘suspected’ suicide bomber – that was offered as justification for the fact that the police pumped bullets into him even after he had been overpowered. The 3 boys in Kupwara shot by the Army while returning from a marriage celebration were ‘suspected’ militants.
Recall that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) licenses the Army to shoot suspects. In Kupwara and Kashmir, as well as all over the North East – human rights violations and killings are justified as the inevitable “collateral damage” of the Indian Army’s war on terror.
The victims of that collateral damage are not just civilians in the Valley – Kashmiri Muslims in India face a never-ending witch-hunt. The arrest and death sentence for the DU lecturer SAR Geelani in the Parliament Attack case was a stark case of how an innocent man could be set up for public lynching- by the media, the Special Branch, the Indian Government. The chauvinist hysteria whipped up over the Parliament Attack makes the civil liberties campaign leading up to Geelani’s acquittal all the more remarkable. A group of DU teachers, lawyers and civil rights activists launched a campaign to save the lecturer – in the face of hostility from official quarters, and even from the CPI(M)-led Delhi University Teachers Association. But the campaign succeeded in challenging the death sentence and securing an acquittal from the Delhi High Court – an acquittal that has been upheld by the Supreme Court recently. The SC judgment acquitted Geelani and Afsan Guru, and reduced Shaukat’s life sentence to a 10-year sentence, but upheld the death penalty for Afzal. This judgment is a significant victory for and vindication of the campaigners for Geelani – because it upheld their claim that there was no evidence against Geelani.
But even as the Supreme Court upheld Geelani’s acquittal, it sentenced him to lifelong victimization – by holding that his behavior had been ‘suspicious’, although there was no evidence against him. Isn’t it the Police’s and the Court’s role to sift through evidence and back up suspicions with fact? If the Police has been unable to come up with any evidence – shouldn’t the Court have had the grace to accept that the Police was in fact biased and Geelani innocent? It seems that the Supreme Court, while having no choice but to acquit Geelani, has sought to ‘acquit’ the Delhi Police ‘honourably’ – by implying that the Police was justified in its witch-hunt and persecution of Geelani. Pointing a ‘needle of suspicion’ at Geelani is a useful precaution against proceedings that ought, logically, to be moved against the Police.
Afzal’s conviction too hangs on a flimsy thread – the confession extracted by the Police under POTA. There are several unanswered questions: Afzal is a surrendered militant – always under State surveillance; could he plan and execute such a major conspiracy without the knowledge of the State? If he was indeed involved - who backed him and supported him? The public has rejected the fiction that the Attack was the accomplishment of a college lecturer and a couple of surrendered militants – they demand to know more. Citizens are moving to demand that Afzal’s sentence be suspended until a fresh, thoroughgoing Parliamentary Enquiry be launched into the Parliament Attack, as well as into the frame-up that has followed.
Draconian laws like POTA aim to define ‘terrorism’ in a way that can justify suspension of the human rights of ordinary citizens and dissenters, suspected of ‘sympathising’ with what is branded terrorism. Geelani – one of the most visible victims of POTA in the most celebrated terrorism case in the country has proved his innocence – and exposed the politics of State repression. POTA may have gone – but its spirit is alive and well. In Bettiah, (Champaran, Bihar) recently, doctors were arrested for treating Nepali patients ‘suspected’ of being Maoists, and charged with ‘sedition’! Treating Nepali people without informing the police is apparently equivalent to waging a war against the State!
Doctors protested against this attempt to gag doctors for honouring their Hippocratic oath and intimidate them into ‘policing’ themselves; demonstrations were held in Delhi as well as many other places. The Indian Medical Association (IMA) also spoke out against the arrests.
An announcement in the Delhi Metro warns people ‘not to befriend strangers’; an advertisement in the daily papers tells us how to ‘spot a terrorist’ (by his bulky clothing, big bags, foreign looks, etc…): posters with a huge eye stare out at us telling us that constant suspicion, chauvinism and xenophobia is the citizens’ answer to terrorism. Menezies and the three boys in Kupwara paid with their lives (Geelani escaped with scars) for the State-sponsored policy of using suspicion to justify witch-hunting and victimization. If we are to defend our democracy, we must resist this policy of using the excuse of ‘fighting terrorism’ to crackdown on civil liberties and people’s movements.
– KK