News Alerts - India
If the Manmohan Singh government has its way, India will soon adopt a law against torture that will make a mockery of our obligations as a democracy, a civilised society, and a signatory to the United Nations Convention Against Torture (CAT). India signed CAT in 1997 and is meant to pass standalone domestic legislation outlawing this barbaric crime. Unfortunately, the Prevention of Torture Bill, 2010 falls far, far short in this regard. Indeed the draft law, if passed unchanged by the Rajya Sabha, will make the elimination of torture and the punishment of its practitioners more difficult than it is under existing law. To begin with, the Bill’s definition of torture makes two unwarranted departures from international norms. Where CAT speaks of torture and “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and builds its definition around the inflicting of severe pain or suffering, the proposed law raises the bar of what constitutes unacceptable treatment much higher. Only acts that cause grievous hurt — defined in the Indian Penal Code in relation to damage to limbs and organs — or which endanger the life, limb, or health of a person will be considered torture. Excluded thus are torture techniques that cause intense pain and suffering but no permanent damage to the victim. Secondly, only torture inflicted in the course of an interrogation will attract the sanctions of the new law — but not torture inflicted to punish, coerce, or intimidate an individual, which CAT covers. (more…)
The Women’s Commission in the Indian state of West Bengal has announced an inquiry into allegations that a tribal woman was forced to parade naked.
Officials say she was forced to walk without her clothes for nearly 10km (6 miles) through three villages and was filmed on a mobile phone.
They say that she was also molested and jeered by a large crowd.
Locals say she was being “punished” because of an illicit love affair with a man from a different community.
A similar thing happened to another woman three years ago in the neighbouring state of Assam. (more…)
The attorney general of the Maldives quit Sunday as the country’s political crisis deepened with the president and the opposition-controlled parliament wrangling over a new Supreme Court.
Husnu Sood, a close associate of President Mohamed Nasheed, stepped down after accusing the parliament of undermining the constitution in the Indian Ocean archipelago nation.
In a televised addressed, Sood accused the parliament of blocking the establishment of a new Supreme Court by Sunday as required by the 2008 constitution.
“He blamed the parliament for undermining the constitution and not allowing the judicial system to work properly,” an official close to Sood told AFP by telephone. “He resigned protesting against the attitude of the parliament.”President Nasheed appointed a panel to carry out the administrative work of the Supreme Court from Sunday after the two-year term of the court expired Saturday without parliament’s approving a replacement. (more…)
BY MANI SHANKAR AIYAR
Fifteen years ago, Jaswant Singh and I were invited to represent India in a Track-II attempt to delineate the logic of the Iran- Pakistan-India gas pipeline. Our principal Pakistani interlocutor was Makhdoom Shah Mehmood Qureshi, fingered by Destiny to guide India-Pakistan relations into the second decade of the 21st century. And, boy, has he made a right royal mess of it!
I AM SURPRISED but astounded, for Shah Mehmood, as I have known him all these years, is, on the face of it, just about the best Pakistani Foreign Minister an Indian could hope for. He hails from the most distinguished spiritual family of the Multan region of southern Pakistani Punjab. As his honorific “Makhdoom” indicates, he will be the Pir one day in succession to his father. He has the closest ties of family and kinship with Prime Minister Yusuf Gilani, who hails from the same region and is also the designated inheritor of his father’s spiritual Pirship. Qureshi’s political credentials are impeccable. He never wavered in his commitment to the PPP, and was, along with his fellow Pir, Amin Fahim of Hala (who really should have been Pakistan’s Prime Minister but is now no more than Asif Zardari’s Commerce Minister), one of Benazir’s most trusted and faithful followers. Wealthy beyond the fondest imaginings of any Indian zamindar. Suave. Highly educated (even if his degree is from Oxford), beautifully dressed at all times, extremely well-mannered and highly sophisticated in language and expression (particularly in English, perhaps less so in Urdu — is that because his mother tongue is Serhaiki?). I would have wanted Qureshi as my counterpart, had I been able to make it to our own External Affairs Ministry.
Then what went wrong?
Perhaps it is that Qureshi’s relationship with India has always been star-crossed. His first visit to India came about as a result of Jaswant Singh and I protesting that, after two rounds of meetings in Singapore and Stockholm, it was imperative that the third and final meeting on the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline be held in our shared sub-continent. Thus, Qureshi landed in Delhi well in time to fly out to Udaipur, but then news came in that Benazir Bhutto’s third government had been toppled that morning, so Shah Mehmood had to fly back to Islamabad immediately. (more…)
NEW DELHI: Former CJI and National Human Rights Commission chief K G Balakrishnan on Tuesday described honour killings as “cold blooded murder”, adding that more than a new law, awareness was needed in society against such inhuman acts. The statement comes at a time when the National Commission for Women and prominent women rights activists have been demanding a separate legislation to define honour crimes.
Balakrishnan was speaking at a seminar organised by the All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) on honour killings. Underlining the deep-rooted problem, NCW chairperson Girija Vyas said the commission was dealing with 50 cases that had poured in the last two months. (more…)
NEW DELHI — Global rights monitor Human Rights Watch urged the Indian government Monday to crack down on village councils and local politicians linked to a spate of recent “honour” killings.
The New York-based watchdog said the authorities should not only prosecute those responsible but also strengthen existing laws to prevent religion and caste-based violence.
Most “honour killings” in India target young couples who marry outside their caste, and are carried out by relatives in an attempt to protect the family’s reputation.
The murders are often sanctioned by village councils and prosecutions are rare because, critics say, local police and politicians choose to turn a blind eye.
“Officials who fail to condemn village council edicts that end in murder are effectively endorsing murder,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director for Human Rights Watch. (more…)
The latest murky cycle of violence in Indian-held Kashmir began late Monday in the Gangbugh neighborhood of Srinagar. Residents say paramilitary officers chased Muzaffar Ahmad Bhat, 17, and two 11th grade friends, possibly fired shots in their direction — the details were not clear. The frightened youths jumped into a drainage canal to get away.
Bhat, who could swim, failed to return home and the community mounted a search. At dawn, his body was found floating in the canal.
As word spread Tuesday morning of the drowning, angry residents gathered to protest. Within 24 hours, they say, two more people had been killed by security forces.
The Indian-controlled portion of Kashmir has been on a knife’s edge since June 11, when a 17-year old boy in Srinagar died after being hit in the head by a tear gas canister fired at close range by security forces. Between that death and Bhat’s drowning, thirteen more people have died at the hands of security forces, each sparking more protests and then more deaths.
The streets of Srinagar, the state’s summer capital, were largely deserted Wednesday after the Indian army was called in to enforce a curfew and quell the demonstrations. But the deaths underscore the volatile mix of armed force and public anger that continues to plague a region long divided between India and Pakistan.
As distraught residents gathered Tuesday to protest Bhat’s death, Fayaz Ahmad Wani, 28, was saying goodbye to his wife and two infant daughters as he headed off to his government horticulture job. (more…)
NEW DELHI: The Indian government is using counter-terrorism measures to arbitrarily detain large numbers of Muslims, says a new report slamming India’s record of protecting minority rights.
No action is being taken against officials who sanction such detentions, even when they are proved illegal, say the authors of the report.
The South Asia chapter of the 2010 State of the World’s Minorities and Indigenous People, brought out by the London-based Minority Rights Group (MRG) International, was released in the capital on Thursday. Farah Mihlar, author of the South Asia chapter, said that the perpetrators of acts of violence against religious minorities in India are allowed to act with impunity and noted the poor rate of arrest and conviction, especially of political leaders orchestrating violence. (more…)
New Delhi: Amid growing instances of honour killings and demands by khap panchayats to amend the Hindu Marriage Act for banning same sub-caste marriage, National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chief KG Balakrishnan today said none should be allowed to enforce “self-created” laws.
“Contrary to the general moral view of the society, nobody shall be allowed to enforce their own self-created law to achieve their narrow-minded societal values,” he said.
Justice Balakrishnan was addressing a training programme on the ‘Rule of Law’ organised by Vishwa Yuvak Kendra here.
The former chief justice of India, however, did not mention the khap or caste panchayats or the controversy surrounding their demand. (more…)
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