Space for civil society is being contracted in India: UN Human Rights expert

Rights activist Binayak Sen. A Division Bench of the Chhattisgrah High Court has begun hearing Dr Sen's appeal against the life sentence awarded to him in a sedition case. The Hindu has reported that a delegation of European Union observers was on Monday allowed by the Chhattisgrah High Court to witness proceedings on rights activist Binayak Sen's appeal against his life term in a sedition case, which his lawyer and Bharatiya Janata Party MP Ram Jethmalani termed as 'political persecution'. When Dr Sen's appeal came up for hearing, a division bench comprising justices T P Sharma and R L Jhanwar considered the reference on the EU proposal made to it by the State government and decided to allow the eight-member team to attend the proceedings. The request of the EU to be present in the court had earlier been sent by the Ministry of External Affairs to the Chhattisgarh government, which had in turn, referred the matter to the High Court. Photo: The Hindu

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggya, expressed her concern for a contraction of the space for civil society in India, despite the country’s “comprehensive and progressive legal framework as a guarantor of human rights and fundamental freedoms as well as the existence of the National Human Rights Commission as well as a number of state and statutory commissions mandated to promote and protect human rights.”

“I am particularly concerned at the plight of human rights defenders working for the rights of marginalized people, i.e. Dalits, Adavasis (tribals), religious minorities and sexual minorities, who face particular risks and ostracism because of their activities,” Sekaggya said at the end of her first fact-finding mission to India.

(The Hindu has reported on the Sekaggya mission and on the Binayak Sen case here.)

Sekaggya underscored the testimonies she received about human rights defenders and their families, who have been killed, tortured, ill-treated, disappeared, threatened, arbitrarily arrested and detained, falsely charged and under surveillance because of their legitimate work in upholding human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders, Margaret Sekaggya. Photo: The Hindu

In her view, the existing national and state human rights commissions should do much more to ensure a safe and conducive environment for human rights defenders throughout the country. To that end, she urged the Government to review the functioning of the National Human Rights Commission with a view to strengthening it.

The independent expert also noted “the arbitrary application of security laws at the national and state levels, most notably the Public Safety Act and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, as these laws adversely affect the work of human rights defenders”. She urged the Government to repeal the Armed Forces Special Powers Act as well as the Public Safety Act and review the application of other security laws which negatively impact on the situation of human rights defenders.

(The full statement of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders is here and is from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights website.)

“I am deeply concerned about the branding and stigmatization of human rights defenders, labelled as ‘naxalites (Maoists)’, ‘terrorists’, ‘militants’, ‘insurgents’, or ‘anti-nationalists’,” Sekaggya said. Defenders, including journalists, who report on violations by State and non-State actors in areas affected by insurgency are being targeted by both sides.

“I urge the authorities to clearly instruct security forces to respect the work of human rights defenders, conduct prompt and impartial investigations on violations committed against human rights defenders and prosecute perpetrators”. The human rights expert further recommended that the Government “enact a law on the protection of human rights defenders in full and meaningful consultation with civil society.”

Sekaggya commended the Government for opening its doors to her mandate and for enabling her to visit five states, which assisted her in gaining a clear understanding of the local specificities in which human rights defenders work.

India stifles all inquiry into Maoist/Naxal movements

The Government of India has warned what it calls “sympathisers” of the Maoists / Naxalites in the country that they face action under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967. The state’s warning that it can take such action simply means that the expectation of inquiry and dialogue into the causes underlying Maoist / Naxalite programmes is a misplaced one.

The statement by the Ministry of Home Affairs is titled ‘Government Asks People to Be Vigilant of CPI (Maoist) Propaganda’ (Thursday, May 06, 2010):

“It has come to the notice of the Government that some Maoist leaders have been directly contacting certain NGOs/intellectuals to propagate their ideology and persuade them to take steps as would provide support to the CPI (Maoist) ideology.

“It is brought to the notice of the general public that under Section 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, any person who commits the offence of supporting such a terrorist organization with inter alia intention to further the activities of such terrorist organizations would be liable to be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or with fine or with both. General public are informed to be extremely vigilant of the propaganda of CPI (Maoist) and not unwittingly become a victim of such propaganda.”

“This is being issued in public interest so that the general public are aware that the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and all its formations and front organizations are terrorist organizations whose sole aim is armed overthrow of the Indian State and that they have no place in India’s parliamentary democracy. CPI (Maoist) continues to kill innocent civilians including tribals in cold blood and destroy crucial infrastructure like roads, culverts, school buildings, gram panchayat buildings, etc. so as to prevent development from reaching these under-developed areas.”

The Times of India: “The dire warning, which marks a significant escalation and carries the risk of confrontation with influential rights activists, also represents a rebuff to the post-Dantewada clamour for a relook at the use of force against Naxals. This comes at a time when several such activists have been named in the FIR along with Kobad Ghandy for helping the alleged Naxalite leader in waging war against the state. A senior Delhi Police officer said there was ‘growing evidence’ that a section of the intelligentsia was helping the Naxal leaders flee states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and West Bengal to set up base in colonies of east and south Delhi. ‘Besides this, these individuals are also helping various frontal organizations of the Maoists to raise funds,’ said the official.”

The Telegraph: “Human rights activists immediately saw in the warning a precursor to a large-scale countrywide crackdown on civil liberties outfits, writers, lawyers, academics and journalists. The move is exceptional in that such a public warning through a media note has probably never been made even against fundamentalist outfits.”
Lawyer Prashant Bhushan saw in the warning ‘a highly unusual step that clearly shows the intention of the government to try and browbeat and terrorise human rights activists and other intellectuals who have been questioning the motives and actions of the government in dealing with tribals and dissidents in the guise of an ant-Maoist drive’.”

Hindustan Times: “Civil society representatives raising voices in favour of Naxals may find themselves in legal tangles as the Home Ministry has warned of action against them under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.”

Indian Express: “Stating that it had noticed some Maoist leaders had been directly contacting certain NGOs and intellectuals to propagate their ideology and persuade them to take steps to provide support to the CPI(Maoist) ideology, the Centre on Thursday said anybody supporting Maoists would be liable for punishment under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.”

The Hindu: “The Centre has warned civil society groups, non-governmental organisations, intellectuals and the general public to refrain from supporting the CPI(Maoist) ideology as it will attract action under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967.”

Activist Gautam Navlakha of the Peoples Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR) has said that the warning from the government harks back to the years of the Emergency. “In two months, it is going to be 35 years of the Emergency (imposed by Indira Gandhi from 1975-1977) and UPA-II [United Progressive Alliance] is de facto recreating the conditions of that period,” he said. “Instead of exploring more sensible and imaginative policies to deal with the Maoists and the tribals who live in the same zones where huge mining deals have been signed, the government is taking recourse to authoritarian and dictatorial measures,” he said.

Navlakha has written an account in the Economic and Political Weekly of a visit to Bastar he made with the Swedish writer Jan Myrdal.

“I am convinced that this is one rebellion which will test the resilience of the Indian state as never before. Precisely because it is a rebellion in which people are fighting to save their land, forests, water and minerals from being grabbed and they are convinced that they have an alternative vision.

“The Maoists are certainly not saints or sinners, but as mortals they show what an unflinching commitment to bringing about social transformation actually means and how far even limited resources can go to help people. Here was an alternative development model being put into practice by the Maoists in the course of which many aspects of social relations have been democratised quite significantly.” (‘Days and nights in the Maoist heartland’, April 17, 2010 vol xlv no 16, EPW.)

Green Hunt, red money and a forest war

If this is a war in India, then the 76 Central Reserve Police Force personnel who were killed on Tuesday, 6 April 2010, were misled by their final commanding superiors, the senior officials and planners in the Ministry of Home Affairs, Union Government of India. The terrible attack, which took place in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, is being considered the worst loss in recent times in the long and bloody history of the Indian state versus leftist guerrillas. Why is India at war with itself? And what prompts the government, less than a day after the deadly ambush, to intensify its bellicose proclamations of “we will take the offensive to the Maoists” and indications that it will call in the army and even air force?

A part of the answer lies within a published comment by a political prisoner in New Delhi’s Tihar jail. “The trouble with India’s budget and economic planning is that the funds allocated to social welfare are basically geared to the vote bank needs of the ruling parties. Instead of long-term capital development towards increasing the welfare of the people, sops are handed out on a yearly basis to garner votes. Thus, while the expenditure on infrastructure is geared primarily to meet the long-term development needs of the business community, the social welfare expenditure is not oriented towards the ultimate extrication of the masses from poverty and misery. The social welfare allocations are more in the form of a dole for immediate political gains. Besides, even by the official count, only 10% of such allocations really reach the needy while the rest are swallowed up by intermediaries – officials and politicians.”

That direct telling of the facts as they are come from Kobad Gandhy, a well-known Maoist intellectual and now prisoner. Gandhy’s short comment is only one amongst many – from academics, activists and even conscientious bureaucrats – who have understood the reasons that give rise to armed Maoism or Naxalism in India, and in particular in those states which have high poverty and are also host to natural resources (forests and minerals, particularly). The bald truth, unpalatable to the Union Government of India but a truth which is lived out every day by tens of millions in the country, is that the possible benefits of economic growth have passed them by. Denied rights, ignored by development work, marginalised by a combination of bureaucratic neglect and rank opportunism of the politician-business combine, Indian citizens in states like Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Jharkhand live miserable lives in heart-rending conditions.

[Gandhy’s article can be found in the (Economic and Political Weekly, Vol 45, No. 14, April 03-April 09, 2010]

These are also the states in which the Maoist and Naxalite groups are active. Why can the central government not make the connection when most others do? Even India’s Planning Commission, its foremost development policymaking body, has considered the special needs of “disturbed areas” with a specific economic and social development programme aimed at remving the root causes of militancy. But that has not been the approach of the state. Instead, it has piled one counter-insurgency operation upon another in a spiral that is ever more expensive in terms of lives and money. The operations mounted by the central government in these areas have led to unprecedented bloodshed, massacres of civilian populations and rampant violations of constitutional rights in the area. Unmindful of many independent commissions of inquiry over the last two decades, the central government with fanfare announced its latest campaign, named Operation Green Hunt. In this – as in many other campaigns before it – the central government insists on treating the affected areas as a “war zone”, and has shown little inclination towards tackling the huge backlog of tribal oppression that has created fertile ground for such violence.

Writing in the 10 March 2010 issue of the journal ‘Liberation‘ (published by the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation), Arindam Sen warned: “The UPA government is clearly preparing the ground for a full-scale intensification of Operation Green Hunt. To begin with, the government has embarked on a massive propagation of its new found doctrine of security which singles out Maoism as the biggest threat to national security. The government is also busy cobbling a grand political consensus around this doctrine and it has already achieved a good deal of success in this regard. If Narendra Modi (Gujarat chief minister) is effusive in praising Chidambaram’s clarity and firmness, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee (West Bengal chief minister) too clearly speaks the same language as Chidambaram.”

The CPI-ML also warns that whoever is not ready to join this ‘coalition of the willing’ (a menacing throwback to former US president G W Bush’s terminology) or dares question the wisdom of this approach is being branded a Maoist sympathiser. Time and again Chidambaram has blamed intellectuals and the civil society, bracketing them all with Maoists. It is not just a case of branding; many are already being harassed, hounded out and persecuted. Himanshu Kumar, a practising Gandhian, of the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram of Bastar saw his ashram in Chhattisgarh ransacked and razed to the ground; fact-finding teams trying to make an independent assessment of the actual situation have all been debarred from visiting ‘conflict zones’ whether in Chhattisgarh or West Bengal. Meanwhile, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) is being invoked on a daily basis to arrest people across the country, states Liberation.

In his analysis, ‘1000 rebels & none saw? Blood spills a home truth‘, in The Telegraph (Kolkata), Sankarshan Thakur wrote: “A senior Chhattisgarh police officer admitted as much to The Telegraph today, affirming that the site of the massacre is not remote enough for nearby tribal settlements to have been unaware. “We get very little information from tribals, and that is a fact and a huge disadvantage,” the officer said, “and what little we get is often stale or even tainted information, but those are the odds we work against. We have not been able to build networks, we are still deeply mistrusted by people, whereas Maoists have access either because of fear or genuine support.” Palpably rattled, he pleaded that today’s was an avoidable tragedy, but having said so, he added a chilling note: “Let me tell you it is neither the first nor the last, such disasters are built into the framework of Operation Green Hunt.”

While the Indian government has the tax payer as the source of its funds for such counter-insurgency operations, how do the Maoists find the money to take on armed units of the state? Ajit Kumar Singh and Sachin Bansidhar Diwan of the Institute for Conflict Management have provided some answers in their explanation of the Indian Maoists’ funds flow, entitled ‘Red Money‘. The evidence has come several seizures of documents and electronic evidence made since 2007 in the Maoist-affected states.

The Maoists target road contractors, contractors for forest products like ‘tendu’ leaves, bamboo and wood. They have reportedly made deals with poachers, smugglers and liquor and timber runners in the forests. In the areas under their control, including district towns, Maoists levy a ‘tax’ on small enterprises such as spinning mills, tobacco units, rice and flour mills, grocery, medical, cigarette and liquor shops, and private doctors. All ‘illegal’ operators, including private schools operating in villages and district towns, are also coerced to pay. The Maoists also secure large revenues from iron and coal mining companies. Apart from abductions, extortion and looting, Maoists also set up unofficial administrations to collect ‘taxes’ in rural areas, where the official government apparatus appears largely to be absent.

How much money can they and have they collected? In November 2009, Chhattisgarh Director General of Police Vishwa Ranjan claimed that the Maoists annually extort up to 20 billion Indian rupees all over India (Rs 2,000 crore, about US$ 447 million). In the states of Bihar and Andhra Pradesh their collections ranged from 2 to 3 billion rupees a year, and this was in 2007. Other states that are important for the Maoists monetarily are Maharashtra (where they have been active since the 1960s in the eastern part of the state), Chhattisgarh itself, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka (the northern part of which contains iron ore mines).

A major source of funding for the Maoists, say Singh and Diwan in the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia Terrorism Portal, is poppy or opium cultivation. Portions of Jharkhand and Bihar are reported to be the principal pockets of poppy cultivation exploited by the Maoists. Opium fields are screened and hidden behind peripheral maize cultivation. The Union Finance Ministry in its annual report for 2009-10, released in March 2010, said that the Central Bureau of Narcotics destroyed at least 1,443 hectares in 2009 alone. How much do the Maoists make from such cultivation? The illicit crops destroyed two districts alone in the state of West Bengal were estimated to have a value of over 12 billion rupees, if diverted to drug cartels for the manufacture of heroin. In India, opium is cultivated under strict licensing in select pockets of three states – Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. The entire opium crop is bought by the government and processed in public sector factories for their further use in pharmaceutical industries.

That is but a small aspect of the Maoist organisation in India. What happens now, after the 6 April massacre? The reactions of the Ministry of Home Affairs, judging by the statements of its minister, P Chidambaram, are not encouraging. Chidambaram rejected one opportunity to depart from the spiral of violence in February, when the Maoists made an offer to begin talks on the condition that the central and state governments suspend their anti-naxalite operations for 72 days. At the time he said: “It was a somewhat bizarre offer. Many weeks ago, I had offered to facilitate talks with the CPI (Maoist) provided they abjured violence. There was no meaningful response to that offer. Nevertheless, on February 23, 2010 I responded that if the CPI (Maoist) made a short, simple and unconditional statement that they would abjure violence, Government would be prepared to hold talks with them. I have received no response to my statement.”

This has been seen as a mistake by several who have been following contemporary Maoism and Naxalism in India. “We welcome the announcement by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) to observe a ceasefire and enter into talks with the Government of India,” said a joint letter to the Government of India written by a number of prominent citizens including Justice Rajindar Sachar, Randhir Singh, B D Sharma, Arundhati Roy, Amit Bhaduri, Manoranjan Mohanty, Prashant Bhushan, Sumit Chakravartty and S A R Geelani. “Given the government’s expressed willingness to engage in talks, we hope that this offer will be reciprocated. This necessarily requires an immediate halt to all paramilitary armed offensive operations (commonly known as Operation Green Hunt). It is also imperative that there should be complete cessation of all hostilities by both sides during the currency of the talks.”

There was no halt and there was no reciprocation. For many, the reasons are not far to seek. Any meaningful dialogue and solution will require that compulsory acquisition of tribal lands and habitats be stopped; that tribals should not be displaced by infrastructure and industrial projects (as is happening on a large scale in the affected states). This is because the central government is bound under law to comply with the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution which safeguards manifold rights of the tribals, including their ownership over land and resources.

“There is a common pattern to the emergence of Maoist violence in many areas,” stated a joint letter written by academics and activists Aditya Nigam, Dilip Simeon, Jairus Banaji, Nivedita Menon, Rohini Hensman, Satya Sivaraman, Sumit Sarkar, and Tanika Sarkar. “First a non-violent mass organisation like the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) in West Bengal or Chasi Muliya Adivasi Sangh (CMAS) in Orissa arises in response to marginalisation, displacement or violence against tribals by the police and paramilitaries. Then the Maoists step in, attempting to take over the movement and giving it a violent turn. The state responds with even more violence, which is directed not only against the Maoists but also against unaffi liated adivasis. At this point, some adivasis join the Maoists in self-defence, their leaders like Chhatradhar Mahato, Lalmohan Tudu, Singanna are either arrested or gunned down in fake encounters and large numbers of unaffi liated adivasis are branded Maoists or Maoist sympathisers and arrested, killed or terrorised by the state.”

This is the crux of the matter, which cannot be solved by Operation Green Hunt and its tragic failures.

[My comment in the Khaleej Times is an abridged version of this posting]