Don’t blame the human rights defenders
MAJA DARUWALA
In response to the finding of the Gujarat government that the accused bombers involved in the recent Ahmedabad blasts were trained in the south and mostly in Kerala, the Kerala government came back with an instant knee jerk reaction that the State’
s efforts to curb terrorism were somehow being prevented by human rights activists who raised a ‘hue and cry.’ Broad statements like these show the work of human rights groups in a bad light and create real misgivings about human rights activists whose limited intention is merely asking the state to uphold the law and follow the due process. Statements against human rights defenders deflect — as they are often intended to do — a real look at why terrorism thrives in our country and also help, again as they are intended to, to put one more nail in the coffin of the little understood and less appreciated work of human rights defenders, who struggle to keep us all safe from unbridled state power and societal prejudice.
Role misunderstood
Human rights defenders don’t espouse, support or defend violence and certainly not terrorism. But they would like to fashion a more effective response to it. A state by its very definition is the embodiment of lawful behaviour. It demands legal behaviour from citizens and itself always acts only through law and as a sentinel of human rights. This is the fundamental difference between state action and the acts of terrorists.
Terrorists by definition and intention act outside the law to terrorise. The state cannot do that. There can be no greater defender of human rights than the state, so it is hard to see it blame human rights defenders for its inability to provide society with reasonable levels of safety and security. What perhaps irks the authorities into seeing human rights defenders as one with the enemy is their constant insistence that the agencies of state act only in accordance with the law and do not take short cuts, nor indulge in illegal practices, nor use public prejudice and stereotypes to shape their response.
In their frustration with the state’s inability to assure them a peaceful life, the public too is often tempted into wanting its government to forget the niceties of legal process and just go and blast those damned people into perdition. It is understandable that people, suffering the effects of evil doing, ask why terrorists should be given a fair trial and not just killed or locked away forever.
The answer lies in our right to make a defence for ourselves against our accusers. Our Constitution requires that we don’t do what terrorists do, kill or deprive people of liberty without a fair process. So, a so-called ‘terrorist’ must first be proved to be a terrorist and then get his just deserts, again at the hands of the state.
Improving the process
This is the process we would all want if our sons were suddenly declared ‘terrorist’. We don’t want the police or the para-militaries to decide in their own secret wisdom that you and I are terrorists and shoot us in our beds or take us into secret hideouts to question us for days on end without ever telling our families or the court where we are or what is being done to us, all in the name of law and order! Human rights defenders wish all our systems of justice were faster, fairer, efficient, honest, responsive and more certain in outcome. This must be the debate as to why we are unable to deal with terrorists, instead of taking rhetorical potshots at our most law abiding citizens.
This system may allow the real terrorist to get away and hence calls for improvements in policing standards and a quick and easy access to justice. But if we don’t want this process for every single one of us then we must abolish the courts and become a police state. But right now the system is designed as a uniform system of law which can protect all equally.
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