Human Rights Organisations are Inhuman, Against Humans

By Amba Charan Vashishth

Strange are the ways of God and, still stranger, are the ways of the self-proclaimed human rights organisations (HROs) and activists (HRAs).

If terrorists strike, kill a few dozens and maim a few hundred, it makes a big story for our TRP hungry and sensation chewing media and newspapers for a day or two. Then they forget. They don't try to follow it up. To report whether the bereaved families are being looked after properly; whether the injured are getting proper treatment and whether the financial compensation and aid promised by the government has actually been disbursed seems to be of no concern to them.

The human rights organisations give us the impression that for them it is inhuman to care for the terror victims, against their sense of morality and against their conscience. For them terrorist killings are no violations of the human rights. In their views, it appears, killing and injuring innocent people is the basic, essential human right of the terrorists as if innocents have no right to life and freedom. That is why the HRAs and HROs never bother about them. The former have never helped the victims financially, legally, socially, morally and emotionally. They may boast to have helped some terrorists get out of the claws of law and the consequential punishment, but they have no roll of honour to display having helped the victims in any way, slightly even.

But if an army or police encounter takes place with criminals and terrorists and in the exchange some of them are killed alongwith police and military personnel, our HROs and HRAs instantly jump to the conclusion that it is only a stage-managed fake encounter to eliminate some innocents. Inversely, it only meant that the army personnel killed in the process were the 'diehard criminals' who deserved this fate. These HROs never bothered about them.

HROs can rightly claim pride in having helped, in every possible manner, a number of criminals and terrorists prove their 'innocence' and get away with their crime getting 'honourably acquitted' consequent upon the prosecution having "failed to prove the charge against them" primarily because either eye witnesses refused to give evidence or resiled from their statements which, to our NGOs, are all obtained under duress using third degree methods. The witnesses too have a point: The dead are not going to be restored to life, so why risk own life by deposing against the culprits.

Way back in 1990 I wrote in the Indian Express that the human rights organizations stand for the protection of the human rights of criminals and terrorists who trample the human rights of innocent people day in and day out and their guns having devoured thousands of innocent people. Children orphaned. Women and girls raped. Women widowed. Old people snatched of the help and protection of their own bread-earners at this age. On the contrary, the HRAs and HRAs spend sleepless nights over raising their voice against infringement of the human rights of anti-social elements.  As if these innocent people butchered by the terrorists or the bereaved families had no human rights. But these organizations which raise hefty donations from people, some even receive donations and grants from foreign agencies even, never go into the crimes committed by anti-social, anti-national and criminal elements. But the moment somebody is hauled up by the investigating agencies they jump to defend him. In a way the police and investigating agencies performing their duty under the law were just engaged in violating the human rights, mostly of criminals and terrorists.

Surprisingly, these human rights organizations have never gone into the cases of the killings of innocent people. They have never stood by these hapless people in their hour of grief and need. They have never volunteered to help the victims of the crimes. They have never extended even a penny of help to them. But the moment somebody is hauled up by police, they run after protecting his human rights. If one were to go by their practice and precept, it looks a criminal and terrorists earns his human rights the moment he commits a heinous crime and has then to face the law of the land.

Forget about the past cases of inhuman terror. Let the human rights organisations tell the people what they have done to provide succor and justice to the last year's Delhi bomb blast victims and their bereaved families.

 The impression that the HROs and HRAs jump to conclude that any person hauled up for investigation concerning a terrorist crimes is an 'innocent' is fortified by a MAIL TODAY  report after the Delhi bomb blasts last year that human rights activist Teesta Setalvad went to Gujarat on a ‘fact-finding mission' to check whether the Ahmedabad blasts- accused, including its alleged mastermind Abu Bashar, are really guilty or are being made scapegoats. She admitted she was in Gujarat, but refused to divulge details, saying "We are in the middle of our investigation and cannot reveal anything."

Father Cedric Prakash, the director of Prashant, an NGO working for human rights and a close associate of Setalvad, according to the report said, "Please give us a few more days. We will come out with all the details."

She has doubted the state police's claims about the serial blasts mystery being solved. In a write- up in her journal Communalism Combat, she said: "Sajid Mansuri      (one of the accused in the case) was said to be absconding for seven months prior to the blasts. How was he caught within 20 days of the blasts?"

So far so good. She has a right to her opinion. She has every right to defend whoever is charged by the police in any State of a crime. But all this she can do only in a court of law.  She cannot be either above the law herself or be a parallel law. Her investigations only display a motive and prejudice which she fails to hide.