BAREFOOT
Terrorism and the State
HARSH MANDER
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A People's Tribunal held recently found out that many innocent lives get destroyed or traumatised when the State presumes an entire community to be responsible for terror attacks.
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PHOTO: K. RAMESH BABU
UNEASY RELATIONSHIP: Police personnel keep watch as Muslims offer prayers in the wake of the blasts in Hyderabad last year.
As bombs explode in crowded market
places and places of worship -
whether in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad,
Bengaluru, Jaipur, Mumbai or
Delhi - many innocent lives are abruptly
snuffed out, while others are marked
for life, maimed or traumatised. Television
screens in our living rooms are inundated
with images of bloodstains on
sidewalks and weeping family members
unable to even comprehend their loss.
The success of the shadowy organisations
which plant these explosives runs
deeper, as the engineered mistrust between
people of diverse faiths further
consolidates with each blast. Millions of
men and women, merely because they
happen to be born into Muslim homes -
believers and non-believers, students,
working people, home-makers and the
aged, the wealthy and the impoverished
- are all, with each blast, dragged into
the dock of the hearts and minds of people
of other religious persuasions. Here
they are charged with guilt at least of
solidarity if not active complicity for the
horrible crimes that the overwhelming
majority of them intensely abhor. They
find their eyes lowered, their spirit
crushed, for heinous offences which
they oppose no less than their
neighbours.
This labelling and blanket condemnation
of people merely because of their
Muslim identities - now a global phenomenon
- is not confined to lay people. It
extends more dangerously to how States
respond to terror attacks, in effect holding
the entire Muslim community guilty
unless they can prove their innocence.
How this can destroy innocent lives forever
was illustrated starkly in a series of
devastating testimonies in a People's
Tribunal on atrocities committed
against minorities in the name of fighting
terrorism, organised by Anhad and
the Human Rights' Law Network from
August 22 to 24, 2008 in Hyderabad.
The tribunal, comprising respected
retired judges, human rights activists,
lawyers, academics and journalists, confirmed
that "a large number of innocent
young Muslims have been and are being
victimised by the police on the charge of
being involved in various terrorist acts
across the country. This is particularly
so in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya
Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and Rajasthan,
though not limited to these
States". It concluded that "this victimisation
and demonisation of Muslims in
the guise of investigation of terror offences,
is having a very serious psychological
impact on the minds of not only
the families of the victims but also other
members of the community. It is leading
to a very strong sense of insecurity and
alienation."
In a hurry
The problem begins immediately after
a bomb attack, when governments
are under great pressure to produce
"results". The pattern in India has been
that just hours, sometimes even minutes
after an attack, the police claim
irrefutable proof that an Islamist organisation
is behind the terror act. For
many years, they would declare that this
is the Pakistan intelligence agency ISI,
or Pakistan-based terror groups. For
geo-political reasons that one can only
speculate on, governments more recently
shifted their instant indictments eastwards
to Bangladesh, particularly to a
till recently little-known organisation
called HUJI. Now the "foreign hand"
seems to have receded; and the prime
culprit has become even more worryingly
the "enemy within", the home-grown
Indian Mujahideen, supported by the
controversially banned SIMI (Students
Islamic Movement of India). If the government
indeed had such conclusive
evidence in every case about the guilty,
why did it not act on time to prevent the
terror attack? And even when a mosque
is bombed, as in Hyderabad, the possibility
that some of the terror attacks
could have been engineered by extremist
organisations of other persuasions
than Islamist is not even considered.
The State seems tacitly to subscribe to
the canard that terrorists can only be
Muslim, forgetting that in India itself
we lost the father of the nation and two
Prime Ministers to terror attacks, and
none of their terrorist attackers was
Muslim.
In the name of interrogation
The police then begin to interrogate
its suspects, mostly Muslim youth. Testimonies
from Hyderabad spoke of their
experience of being illegally abducted by
police in civil uniforms and unmarked
vehicles, blindfolded and driven to locations
where they are tortured. In other
States, the experience of torture is common,
also in "legal" police custody and
sometimes even in judicial custody.
They are undressed, beaten relentlessly
with belts made from old tyres or sticks,
given electric shocks including on their
genitals, their faith humiliated, their
loved ones such as a pregnant wife or an
aged father repeatedly summoned to
police stations, and ultimately they
agree to sign on blank confession papers.
If they are picked up from their
homes, people report midnight knocks,
violent searches and beating even of
children and old women. Many testify to
the ransacking of their homes and
shops. If they are picked up from elsewhere,
their families are not informed,
and they run from one police
station to another to find their loved
ones.
The youth come from diverse backgrounds,
mostly with no previous criminal
records. They maybe students, auto
rickshaw drivers, ice cream sellers, clerics
or computer professionals. But as
soon as they are targeted by the police,
they are disgraced, usually their employment
is terminated, their livelihoods
boycotted, and even Muslims are
scared to associate with the family, for
fear that they also maybe tarnished with
the same crimes. The media usually accepts
the police version uncritically, and
broadcasts it with shrill sensational
overtones which affirm the guilt of the
accused persons to the general public,
aggravating their stigmatisation.
The courts are also usually more than
willing to go along with the police version,
extending remand, denying bail,
often responding with little urgency
even in habeas corpus petitions, and
most gravely, wilfully failing to act on
even visible signs of torture on the body
of the young men produced before
them, refusing to act and take on record
their complaints of torture, let alone
actively confirming from them that they
were not tortured. They also allow criminal
proceedings to persist against minors.
Sardar was 17 when he was
charged with complicity in the Coimbatore
blasts. He was 27 when he was
acquitted, but only after nearly a decade
of harrowing incarceration.
Destroyed lives
Many young lives are destroyed forever
by the police labelling them as terrorists.
The charges are often flimsy and
far-fetched. It matters little that eventually
the police is, in most cases, unable
to prove the charges, and it sometimes
itself drops the charges or the youth
accused of terror crimes are eventually
freed by the courts. But no one is held
responsible for the lost years of dishonour,
incarceration, and the crumbling of
families. Many of the arrested are sole
bread-earners: sons caring for aged parents
and siblings, or for a young wife and
small children. The tribunal heard tens
of testimonies from every State, of families
reduced to pitiful destitution because
those who earned for them were
detained for many long years. Most are
ultimately acquitted, but return heartbroken
to crushed and diminished families.
Some die in custody, never to return,
some lose their sanity.
There is no doubt that the governments
and people of this land need to
combat terrorism, and to track down
and punish those who randomly take
innocent lives. But in this battle we
must not sacrifice our convictions, of
democracy, law, justice and humanity.
We must not profile people because of
their faith. We must not incarcerate
people without evidence and torture
them to extract spurious proof. If we do,
our jails may overflow with men we dub
to be terrorists, but the terrorists would
still triumph, victorious in their battle
of enabling fear and hate to extinguish
our sense of goodness and fairness.
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