A CHRISTMAS UPDATE FROM KANDHAMAL
From John Dayal
Christmas celebrated in Kandhamal villages in Orissa after three years
26 December 2010
Bodimunda village in Kandhamal, Orissa, celebrated Christmas for the first time in three years. And in Barakhama village several kilometres away, a strong police posse kept watch as 2,000 Christians prayed a little distance from where a 500 strong group was “observing” events that led to death and mass destruction in December 2007, and then again for seven weeks from 23 August 2008.
Christmas will never be the same ever again in this part of Orissa which at the peak of the violence saw 54,000 internally displaced Christians – over 30,000 of them in government refugee camps and the rest in forests or far away from home. But the people would not be denied celebrating the birth of Christ – many of them had faced death when asked to leave thier faith, drink some cow urine and become Hindus if they wanted to live in their villages.
Midnight Mass had become a memory, but this time two Catholic priests, a religious brother, the head of the Mother Teresa Sisters in Orissa and their friends decided to challenge the fear and the “Kui” group of the dreaded Lambodhar Kahar and celebrated the Christian festival as it should be.
Fr Ajay Singh, himself born in a hamlet near Brahmanigaon village which bore the brunt of the 2007 Christians violence, told me on the phone that there was absolute fear on the Eve of Christmas. There had been posters and repeated announcements by the Kui Samaj that they would go ahead with their programme, recalling the Kui programme on 24 December 2007 that was the trigger to the mass violence, and had been surprisingly allowed by the government authorities. The District government allowed the programme once again, but this time ensured there were some policemen to keep guard.
In Delhi, I had been receiving frantic and repeated calls from contacts in Barakhama and Tikabali who said about the same thing, urging with me to get the federal government in the national capital and state authorities in Orissa’s capital Bhubaneswar to ensure that Christmas passed off peacefully.
On Sunday, Lambodhar Kahar, leader of Kandhamal Kui Samaj, had told reporters that his group would hold the rallies to honour Mallick, a tribal villager who had died under mysterious circumstances in December 2007. Kahar and local Hindu leaders blamed Christians for his death and wanted to “honour him as a Hindu martyr. “ Mallik had earlier been accused of pulling down a church. Villagers said Hindu radicals held secret meetings and distributed leaflets asking people to congregate in large numbers in every area to observe the “memorial day.”
St Gabriel Brother Markose, an advocate who from Jharkhand who has made Kandhamal his temporary home, told me on the phone that in Bodimunda village, the most tense this week, the Catholic catechist who was forced to become a Hindu, came back and animated prayers at the local church. The Catholic community celebrated with a night mass. The Believers Church repaired their church and celebrated on 25th during day. Baptists and Pentecostals were still afraid to openly celebrate Christmas in the hinterland areas.
Br Markose said armed police personnel were deployed and subordinate officers and senior officials kept on visiting. Towards end of the mass The Collector and the SP too reached the village.
Fathers Ajay Singh and Nicholas Barla, another priest-lawyer who ahs been working on human rights and legal issues in the district for some time, volunteered to say night mass at the sensitive village. Sr Suma along with other Nuns of the Missionaries of Charity of Mother Teresa was also present.
Br Markose narrated: “Before the Mass as we moved around the village, we stopped at the only tea shop for tea. All of us from outside took our cups of tea and the last cup of tea was taken by a person from the village. Just as he was about to sip the tea, the shop keeper told him in the local Kui language ‘if you took tea, I will have to pay fine of Rs. 1000. Hearing this, the villager was returning the cup of tea. I understood, and told the shop keeper that I would reimburse if he had to pay fine and I gave him my phone number. If he is fined by fanatics, he can call me and I will reimburse his expense, of course it will give me a chance to expose the social boycott of Christians in that village.”
According to Br Markose, about 10 days ago a Christian woman purchased 'muri' -- puffed rice -- from an old lady. That old lady was imposed a fine of Rupees 500 for selling muri to a Christian. Since she was too poor to pay the fine, she pleaded and her fine was reduced to Rs. 100.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Thursday, December 9, 2010
In Kandhamal, Maoist violence adds a new dimension to recovery
Kandhamal Update One in the Season of Advent 9dec10
Maoist violence delays church restoration, and the Catholic Parish of Batticola village that has vanished in thin air
John Dayal, Kandhamal, {Orissa} 8 December 2010
Sikarma Catholic parish is a blessed one – it escaped anti Christian violence both in Christmas 2007 and the 23 August to November carnage of 2008. But today it is a Parish in mourning. Five of a local Catholic Dalit and Tribal families were wiped out when an ambulance they were travelling in was blown up in a bend in the forest road on its way back from a Hospital in Behrampur some 200 kilometers at midnight on 27th November 2010. Ironically, the pregnant woman the family had taken to the hospital gave birth to a stillborn child because they had delayed too long. The tragedy was further aggravated, for among the dead was a pregnant social worker, and a three year old girl who would not stay back at home with her father. The social worker and the ambulance driver were the only one not related to the others. She had volunteered to accompany the woman in distress.
Maoists had a few days earlier shot dead a businessman and Hindutva political activist Manoj Sahoo, 35, at point blank range in the marketplace. Sahoo was a contractor and had been listed in a public handbill reportedly published by Maoists after the assassination of VHP vice president Lakshmananda Saraswati on 23rd August 2008, which triggered off a three month orgy of anti Christian violence by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh groups Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Adivasi Kalyan Parishad. Manoj was an enthusiastic local leader of that violence, according to the villagers.
In another incident three moths ago, two Christian home guards were killed by the Maoists who accused them of being police informers before slashing them with sharp weapons and then executing them with gunfire.
In the terror that now pervades the area in Brahmanigaon and Sikarma, people are afraid to come to work. According to the Parish priest of Brahmanigaon, his work of reconstructing the church burnt down on Christmas Eve in 2007 has been stalled because the contractor has chickened out.
In a black turn to the tragic story of nearby Sikarma, the Maoists reportedly apologized to the surviving members of the small well knit-clan, and have offered compensation. The surviving family members told me they would refuse the money if indeed it was given.
The Maoists had set the trap – a powerful wired anti-vehicle mine set off by a long distance switch – for a local senior police officer, who was to pass by the same route in a white vehicle, very similar to the ill-fated hospital ambulance. The policeman apparently changed his plans at the last moment. According to villagers who wish to remain anonymous, the ambulance driver too had been “warned” by unidentified persons not to travel along that route so late at night, but the family was in a hurry to reach home to collect money for the Behrampur hospital where their patient required fresh infusions of expensive blood.
The ambulance driver avoided possible Maoist “checkpoints” in the nearby Brahmanigaon area by taking a detour through the local police station and hospital before coming back to the only road to the village, and its rendezvous with tragedy. It would seem that the Maoists mistook the ambulance be the vehicle of the policeman and set off the blast. Later, they dragged the bodies of the driver and another man close to the culvert, seemingly to identify them. The women’s bodies were still far away from the shattered vehicle.
It was some days after the blast that I came to the village after passing by the twisted remains of the jeep-ambulance by the culvert. I met the family which was still in a trauma to be very coherent. The story was narrated by Sister Teresa who runs a dispensary in her convent, and Fr Dushmant, the assistant parish priest, who had helped pick up the pieces of the bodies as they lay, splattered over 500 meters in the jungle. Dushmant has himself seen violence at close quarters. He was earlier in the Kanjimendi-Nuagaon Pastoral House when it was burnt by marauding mobs in August 2008.
Fr Dushmant says they are still to find the legs of one woman, and the head of another.
Sister Teresa said she had earlier attended on the pregnant woman, Bonita, the wife of casual labour Buna Digal. She had diagnosed that the woman was carrying a fetus too large for a normal delivery. She told them to take the woman to the government hospital in Phulbani or to Behrampur. Buna waited too long. By the time his driver friend Simon Pradhan brought the hospital ambulance, rushed Bonita and her relatives to the hospital, it was too late for the unborn child. He was dead in the womb. But Bonita still needed blood, and for that, the family needed money. The ambulance was returning with the family to borrow the money.
In their twin huts in the Musina hamlet of Sikarma village close to the road, Bento Digal sits with his grand aunt Sushila Digal, who now looks older than her 60 years. Bento lost his pregnant wife Innoci and daughter Subhashi. His three year old son Pabano had remained in the village, and survived. Sushila lost her son Buna, whose wife survives in the Behrampur hospital after her still born delivery. The two unrelated good Samaritans who died were Simon Pradhan, a friendly tribal who had brought the ambulance from the hospital in Brahmanigaon where he served, and Shushanti Mallik, 30, a tribal and social worker of an NGO. The survivors do not know what the future holds for them. Senior district officers are still to visit the twin families.
… …
Batticola – The Parish that vanished
Tragic in a different manner is the story of the Catholic parish that has vanished into the unknown. Batticola parish covered the Nandigiri village which had more than six dozen worshipping families. These were devout families, and had given at least three Nuns and two Priests to the Church in recent years despite their life of abject poverty as petty famers and casual labour. One of the priests is Fr Mrityunjay, the secretary to Archbishop Raphael Cheenath and also the treasurer of the diocese. His mother and two brothers are witness to some of the worst aspects of the anti Christian violence of 2008. One of his brothers was forcibly tonsured, made to drink cow dung and urine in a religious conversion masterminded and enforced by the local Hindutva thugs.
Every single Christian house in Nandigiri was torched and destroyed in the violence. The people ran away into the forest, and then found refuge in government camps. Bu they are among the unfortunate who may never be able to go to the village of their ancestors because they have been told they would have to convert to Hinduism as a precondition to their return. The kingpin behind the violence is one Goverdhan Pradhan, who roamed free for two years before he was finally arrested in nearby Udayagiri town by police inspector Murmu.
Collector Krishan Kumar has apparently conceded that he cannot ensure the safety of the Christians back in Nandigiri nor can he persuade the local Hindus to accept their brethren back. His solution has been to found a new village ghetto several kilometers away at the foot of a mountain, just for the Christians. In a supreme irony, this village is called Shantinagar, the place of peace.
The collector has allotted 4 cents of land – four per cent of an acre – to each family to build a house. The 69 families who have shifted – 51 of them Catholic – cleared the shrub, dug the rain water trenches, and waited in tents before the houses – sterile and identical brick and steel sheet roof structures – were put up by the Believers Church in money they donated together with the little money that the collector gave. The houses cost Rs 80,000, and many of the residents now owe money to the church. Efforts are on to persuade the church to waive off the balance. The Jesuits and Mother Teresa’s sisters have provided the cots and blankets, the cooking pots and the clothes.
But there is no livelihood. The collector has allotted them the land on condition that they would let go of their claims on the old village land. But he has not allotted them any agricultural land in exchange of their fields in the village where they are now not allowed to till. This is a village where the men have no jobs of any kind. The younger lot goes to the nearby town of Udayagiri to try their luck as casual labour. They have lost much more than their livelihood. They have all but lost their dignity. And the church has lost its parish. The official parish priest now lives in far away Bhubaneswar. A priest closer by comes for Sunday prayers. Even as I was talking to them, the villagers were being persuaded by St Gabriel congregation Brother Markose, who was uniting them to build a new church-cum-community hall, so they could celebrate Christmas in a new church, and not under the very cold Kandhamal skies.
Their Christmas wish remains a return to the lost parish of Batticola in Nandigiri and to revive their old Church.
Maoist violence delays church restoration, and the Catholic Parish of Batticola village that has vanished in thin air
John Dayal, Kandhamal, {Orissa} 8 December 2010
Sikarma Catholic parish is a blessed one – it escaped anti Christian violence both in Christmas 2007 and the 23 August to November carnage of 2008. But today it is a Parish in mourning. Five of a local Catholic Dalit and Tribal families were wiped out when an ambulance they were travelling in was blown up in a bend in the forest road on its way back from a Hospital in Behrampur some 200 kilometers at midnight on 27th November 2010. Ironically, the pregnant woman the family had taken to the hospital gave birth to a stillborn child because they had delayed too long. The tragedy was further aggravated, for among the dead was a pregnant social worker, and a three year old girl who would not stay back at home with her father. The social worker and the ambulance driver were the only one not related to the others. She had volunteered to accompany the woman in distress.
Maoists had a few days earlier shot dead a businessman and Hindutva political activist Manoj Sahoo, 35, at point blank range in the marketplace. Sahoo was a contractor and had been listed in a public handbill reportedly published by Maoists after the assassination of VHP vice president Lakshmananda Saraswati on 23rd August 2008, which triggered off a three month orgy of anti Christian violence by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh groups Bajrang Dal, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Adivasi Kalyan Parishad. Manoj was an enthusiastic local leader of that violence, according to the villagers.
In another incident three moths ago, two Christian home guards were killed by the Maoists who accused them of being police informers before slashing them with sharp weapons and then executing them with gunfire.
In the terror that now pervades the area in Brahmanigaon and Sikarma, people are afraid to come to work. According to the Parish priest of Brahmanigaon, his work of reconstructing the church burnt down on Christmas Eve in 2007 has been stalled because the contractor has chickened out.
In a black turn to the tragic story of nearby Sikarma, the Maoists reportedly apologized to the surviving members of the small well knit-clan, and have offered compensation. The surviving family members told me they would refuse the money if indeed it was given.
The Maoists had set the trap – a powerful wired anti-vehicle mine set off by a long distance switch – for a local senior police officer, who was to pass by the same route in a white vehicle, very similar to the ill-fated hospital ambulance. The policeman apparently changed his plans at the last moment. According to villagers who wish to remain anonymous, the ambulance driver too had been “warned” by unidentified persons not to travel along that route so late at night, but the family was in a hurry to reach home to collect money for the Behrampur hospital where their patient required fresh infusions of expensive blood.
The ambulance driver avoided possible Maoist “checkpoints” in the nearby Brahmanigaon area by taking a detour through the local police station and hospital before coming back to the only road to the village, and its rendezvous with tragedy. It would seem that the Maoists mistook the ambulance be the vehicle of the policeman and set off the blast. Later, they dragged the bodies of the driver and another man close to the culvert, seemingly to identify them. The women’s bodies were still far away from the shattered vehicle.
It was some days after the blast that I came to the village after passing by the twisted remains of the jeep-ambulance by the culvert. I met the family which was still in a trauma to be very coherent. The story was narrated by Sister Teresa who runs a dispensary in her convent, and Fr Dushmant, the assistant parish priest, who had helped pick up the pieces of the bodies as they lay, splattered over 500 meters in the jungle. Dushmant has himself seen violence at close quarters. He was earlier in the Kanjimendi-Nuagaon Pastoral House when it was burnt by marauding mobs in August 2008.
Fr Dushmant says they are still to find the legs of one woman, and the head of another.
Sister Teresa said she had earlier attended on the pregnant woman, Bonita, the wife of casual labour Buna Digal. She had diagnosed that the woman was carrying a fetus too large for a normal delivery. She told them to take the woman to the government hospital in Phulbani or to Behrampur. Buna waited too long. By the time his driver friend Simon Pradhan brought the hospital ambulance, rushed Bonita and her relatives to the hospital, it was too late for the unborn child. He was dead in the womb. But Bonita still needed blood, and for that, the family needed money. The ambulance was returning with the family to borrow the money.
In their twin huts in the Musina hamlet of Sikarma village close to the road, Bento Digal sits with his grand aunt Sushila Digal, who now looks older than her 60 years. Bento lost his pregnant wife Innoci and daughter Subhashi. His three year old son Pabano had remained in the village, and survived. Sushila lost her son Buna, whose wife survives in the Behrampur hospital after her still born delivery. The two unrelated good Samaritans who died were Simon Pradhan, a friendly tribal who had brought the ambulance from the hospital in Brahmanigaon where he served, and Shushanti Mallik, 30, a tribal and social worker of an NGO. The survivors do not know what the future holds for them. Senior district officers are still to visit the twin families.
… …
Batticola – The Parish that vanished
Tragic in a different manner is the story of the Catholic parish that has vanished into the unknown. Batticola parish covered the Nandigiri village which had more than six dozen worshipping families. These were devout families, and had given at least three Nuns and two Priests to the Church in recent years despite their life of abject poverty as petty famers and casual labour. One of the priests is Fr Mrityunjay, the secretary to Archbishop Raphael Cheenath and also the treasurer of the diocese. His mother and two brothers are witness to some of the worst aspects of the anti Christian violence of 2008. One of his brothers was forcibly tonsured, made to drink cow dung and urine in a religious conversion masterminded and enforced by the local Hindutva thugs.
Every single Christian house in Nandigiri was torched and destroyed in the violence. The people ran away into the forest, and then found refuge in government camps. Bu they are among the unfortunate who may never be able to go to the village of their ancestors because they have been told they would have to convert to Hinduism as a precondition to their return. The kingpin behind the violence is one Goverdhan Pradhan, who roamed free for two years before he was finally arrested in nearby Udayagiri town by police inspector Murmu.
Collector Krishan Kumar has apparently conceded that he cannot ensure the safety of the Christians back in Nandigiri nor can he persuade the local Hindus to accept their brethren back. His solution has been to found a new village ghetto several kilometers away at the foot of a mountain, just for the Christians. In a supreme irony, this village is called Shantinagar, the place of peace.
The collector has allotted 4 cents of land – four per cent of an acre – to each family to build a house. The 69 families who have shifted – 51 of them Catholic – cleared the shrub, dug the rain water trenches, and waited in tents before the houses – sterile and identical brick and steel sheet roof structures – were put up by the Believers Church in money they donated together with the little money that the collector gave. The houses cost Rs 80,000, and many of the residents now owe money to the church. Efforts are on to persuade the church to waive off the balance. The Jesuits and Mother Teresa’s sisters have provided the cots and blankets, the cooking pots and the clothes.
But there is no livelihood. The collector has allotted them the land on condition that they would let go of their claims on the old village land. But he has not allotted them any agricultural land in exchange of their fields in the village where they are now not allowed to till. This is a village where the men have no jobs of any kind. The younger lot goes to the nearby town of Udayagiri to try their luck as casual labour. They have lost much more than their livelihood. They have all but lost their dignity. And the church has lost its parish. The official parish priest now lives in far away Bhubaneswar. A priest closer by comes for Sunday prayers. Even as I was talking to them, the villagers were being persuaded by St Gabriel congregation Brother Markose, who was uniting them to build a new church-cum-community hall, so they could celebrate Christmas in a new church, and not under the very cold Kandhamal skies.
Their Christmas wish remains a return to the lost parish of Batticola in Nandigiri and to revive their old Church.
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Economic boycott of Christians in Kandhamal; rampant insecurity as villagers forced to live as Hindus
KANDHAMAL UPDATE NOVEMBER 2010
From John Dayal
9 November 2010-11-09
[Based on the Report of a Fact Finding group of Activists on the Social and Economical Boycott of Christians in the Kandhamal district of Orissa:]
The Collector of Kandhamal, Orissa, Dr. Krishan Kumar who headed the district during the anti Christian violence of August-October 2008 which left 100 dead, 5,600 houses burnt and about 56,000 persons displaced, seems now to be presiding over a well thought out economic boycott of the minority community. Confronted with the stark reality, Krishan has taken to blaming the Church and its leadership for being a hindrance in restoring peace – possibly because they have petitioned the High Court and the Supreme court of India on issues of justice in the region.
The economic boyctott of Kondh and Panos Christians in Kandhamal, which first came to light in the People’s National Tribunal headed by former Delhi chief justice Shah, held in New Delhi in August this year, continues to be a source of major harassment of the community, a fact finding team of social activist and lawyers has discovered in a field study of the region earlier this month. The preliminary report was released yesterday.
The fact finding team consisted of four well-known activists led by Advocate Nicholas Barla, a tribal activist leader, with Advocate Brother Marcus, a social worker, Jugal Kishore Ranjit, a dalit human right activist and Ajay Kumar Singh, human right activist. They visited Kandhamal on 5th of November 2010 to verify the allegations of social and economical boycotts of Kandhamal Christians. The team visited four villages of four police stations of three blocks in violent hit district of Kandhamal in Orissa.
The following is the operative part of the Fact Finding Report and Update:
Despite the state administration claims of normalcy, what has been found by the Fact-finding group report reveals a state of lawlessness and utter fear and sense of insecurity of the persecuted Christians.
The team first visited Gadaguda village under G. Udayagiri police station under Tikabali that witnessed violence as late as 30th of October 2008, almost two months after violence was unleashed against Christian. An elderly couple in their late 70s were axed and then burnt alive here. Scores of people were injured. One of them, an army man, has bullets in his hands and thighs. Some are still in tents. The team interacted with the people of Dakanaju village and nearby villagers. They included the postman, Sarapanch and a group of affected Christians. The team was told the Christians of Dakanaju village were barred from taking water from the government dug well. The team then met Gadaguda Sarapanch, Sachindra Pradhan and asked whether he was aware of such instance. Mr. Pradhan told that he was not aware and would look into the matter and sort out at the earliest.
The team then headed for Bodimunda village under Tikabali police station in Tikabali block. They parked the vehicle on the roadside and headed towards the broken buildings and houses, a sure sign of wrath of anti-Christian violence. Upon reaching the village, the team members headed for a pastor’s house as there were hardly anybody seen on the street amidst the ruins. The pastor, Binod Pradhan (name changed), welcomed the group to his house and a definite anxiety reflected on his face. The team found that his house was intact. The pastor told the group that he has been forced to become a Hindu to save his old mother, who could not have escaped the violence as she was not in a position to walk even.
Within minutes of the team’s coming, a person later identified as a RSS cadre came to the house to enquire about the group. The pastor informed him that the guests are bank officials as his relative works in a bank. It was a sign that the team should leave the house soon.
Meanwhile, the team was informed of social and economical boycott imposed on the Christians by the right wing group RSS, the parent group of the Bharatiya Janata party, and there would be fines if any vehicle ferry any Christian be he healthy or sick, or their belongings from the village to outside or from outside into village. The team wanted to verify the allegations and went to a house of certain Bamadev Pradhan, a tribal Christian. Bamadev was lying on the muddy floor and could not get up as he was struck with paralysis. The family members told the group that being paralysis man and was suffering from fever, they looked for a hired auto to take him to a nearby hospital, Tikabali, 8 kilometres away from the village.
Nobody was ready to come to village and finally a Christian who owned an auto-rickshaw was almost forced to pick up the paralytic person. When the hired auto was returning after the drop, it was stopped and taken away by the RSS elements. The owner took the help of the auto union, which negotiated for the release of the auto paying fine of one thousand fifty one rupees (Rs 1,051) and with the assurance that the auto owner would not ferry any Christian from the village.
The team has started interacting with the paralysed family members for five minutes, when a Christian villager; Jesaya Nayak entered the house and informed the team members that it should leave the place as the situation was volatile.
The team went to another house. A fearful group of Christians had assembled there and interacted with them. The fearful Christians said, “We are in a state of shock. Those who have something have moved out the village and we poor people are left behind. What haunts us and saddens us is the administration, the BDO and police, who are hand in glove with RSS. Instead of becoming sensitive to our plight, the administration wants to deprive us of our basic amenities. They have banned the local auto-rickshaws, the only means of transportation in the area from taking Christians passengers. “We are not allowed to bring housing materials nor food provisions or medicines nor allowed to buy anything from the local shops. We do not have any shop of our own. Here, we are struggling to live as human being”, the victims said. The team enquired whether they had complained it before the police, the people replied positively and explained the statement of Inspector in charge, IIC, Tikabali, who said “being a Christian you have to suffer and there is no option’
The team wanted to meet the auto-rickshaw owner and others who have been fined. A villager volunteered to join to meet the auto owner, who has to pay the fine for ferrying the paralytic to the hospital. The auto-rickshaw owner, a pastor, told the team that he had to pay the fine one thousand fifty one rupees despite he had to complain to the police. The team then met Birendra Nayak (name changed and a Hindu himself), who told the team members that he had to pay Rs 5000 to get his tractor released as it was transporting the housing materials for the construction of the house of a Boarder Security Force soldier, which was destroyed during anti-Christian violence. Birendra Nayak went on to add, “It is because the local police takes percentage, (a bribe) and protects the anti-social elements who rule the roost. I informed the local police, but nothing happened”.
Pushpanjali Nayak, the soldier’s mother said who could be contacted over the telephone, told the group, “this incident shocked her army son, who became ill and left the village in disgust. We are presently living under polythene like a cowshed without roof and floor and proper wall with little money that we have had managed to collect, yet we cannot build our houses. We had brought sand for the house and were taken away by RSS. Our life is hell here”. She continued sobbing as she narrated. The former pastor, who says that he would openly practise the faith if situations become normal adds, “The sand that the tractor brought for the house was taken away to build the temple in the village”.
Incidentally, there are a group of 15 police persons stationed in the village and they are mute spectators to these incidents.
The team then headed for Keredi village under Phulbani block and went to a Christian household. The team found a huge photo of Lord Krishna. Naresh Digal, an ex-army man (name changed) explained that he had to” live like a Hindu as they are four households in the locality. The environment is quite hostile and there is no support from the administration. He went on to further state that his neighbour, an ex-army man, had to bear the brunt of RSS people and his house was destroyed. He filed the complaints and after eight days police came to see and left the place even without entering the broken house. The life time earnings of his neighbour are gone. What will he invest on the family’s future? What is the use of this way of life if there is no support from anywhere?” The woman, who shared that her cousin has become a nun, said”we are waiting for the day when we could be free to practise the religion of our choice. "Not sure when the day would dawn.”
The team then went to Gandapadar village in Minia gram panchayat in Phiringia block. It was deep in the interior. It was not difficult to identify the Christians’ houses. The woman of the house welcomed into the repaired house. The team saw a huge framed photo of Lord Shiva on the wall. When asked about the photo, she changed her face and struggled to explain,” The RSS has given us the photo and a “Tulsi” plant for worship. We have kept as often they come to check whether we reconverted to Christianity. We know we can never leave our faith.” The villagers also stated that almost all the houses in the village have two photos; that of Jesus and Shiva. Tarabati Digal explained that there are 10 families still living outside the village.
Signed by Peoples’ Fact Finding Report Team:
Advocate Nicholas Barla, tribal activist leader,
Advocate Marcus, social worker,
Jugal Kishore Ranjit, dalit human right activist
Ajay Kumar Singh, human right activist
8th November 2010, Phulbani, Kandhamal, Orissa
From John Dayal
9 November 2010-11-09
[Based on the Report of a Fact Finding group of Activists on the Social and Economical Boycott of Christians in the Kandhamal district of Orissa:]
The Collector of Kandhamal, Orissa, Dr. Krishan Kumar who headed the district during the anti Christian violence of August-October 2008 which left 100 dead, 5,600 houses burnt and about 56,000 persons displaced, seems now to be presiding over a well thought out economic boycott of the minority community. Confronted with the stark reality, Krishan has taken to blaming the Church and its leadership for being a hindrance in restoring peace – possibly because they have petitioned the High Court and the Supreme court of India on issues of justice in the region.
The economic boyctott of Kondh and Panos Christians in Kandhamal, which first came to light in the People’s National Tribunal headed by former Delhi chief justice Shah, held in New Delhi in August this year, continues to be a source of major harassment of the community, a fact finding team of social activist and lawyers has discovered in a field study of the region earlier this month. The preliminary report was released yesterday.
The fact finding team consisted of four well-known activists led by Advocate Nicholas Barla, a tribal activist leader, with Advocate Brother Marcus, a social worker, Jugal Kishore Ranjit, a dalit human right activist and Ajay Kumar Singh, human right activist. They visited Kandhamal on 5th of November 2010 to verify the allegations of social and economical boycotts of Kandhamal Christians. The team visited four villages of four police stations of three blocks in violent hit district of Kandhamal in Orissa.
The following is the operative part of the Fact Finding Report and Update:
Despite the state administration claims of normalcy, what has been found by the Fact-finding group report reveals a state of lawlessness and utter fear and sense of insecurity of the persecuted Christians.
The team first visited Gadaguda village under G. Udayagiri police station under Tikabali that witnessed violence as late as 30th of October 2008, almost two months after violence was unleashed against Christian. An elderly couple in their late 70s were axed and then burnt alive here. Scores of people were injured. One of them, an army man, has bullets in his hands and thighs. Some are still in tents. The team interacted with the people of Dakanaju village and nearby villagers. They included the postman, Sarapanch and a group of affected Christians. The team was told the Christians of Dakanaju village were barred from taking water from the government dug well. The team then met Gadaguda Sarapanch, Sachindra Pradhan and asked whether he was aware of such instance. Mr. Pradhan told that he was not aware and would look into the matter and sort out at the earliest.
The team then headed for Bodimunda village under Tikabali police station in Tikabali block. They parked the vehicle on the roadside and headed towards the broken buildings and houses, a sure sign of wrath of anti-Christian violence. Upon reaching the village, the team members headed for a pastor’s house as there were hardly anybody seen on the street amidst the ruins. The pastor, Binod Pradhan (name changed), welcomed the group to his house and a definite anxiety reflected on his face. The team found that his house was intact. The pastor told the group that he has been forced to become a Hindu to save his old mother, who could not have escaped the violence as she was not in a position to walk even.
Within minutes of the team’s coming, a person later identified as a RSS cadre came to the house to enquire about the group. The pastor informed him that the guests are bank officials as his relative works in a bank. It was a sign that the team should leave the house soon.
Meanwhile, the team was informed of social and economical boycott imposed on the Christians by the right wing group RSS, the parent group of the Bharatiya Janata party, and there would be fines if any vehicle ferry any Christian be he healthy or sick, or their belongings from the village to outside or from outside into village. The team wanted to verify the allegations and went to a house of certain Bamadev Pradhan, a tribal Christian. Bamadev was lying on the muddy floor and could not get up as he was struck with paralysis. The family members told the group that being paralysis man and was suffering from fever, they looked for a hired auto to take him to a nearby hospital, Tikabali, 8 kilometres away from the village.
Nobody was ready to come to village and finally a Christian who owned an auto-rickshaw was almost forced to pick up the paralytic person. When the hired auto was returning after the drop, it was stopped and taken away by the RSS elements. The owner took the help of the auto union, which negotiated for the release of the auto paying fine of one thousand fifty one rupees (Rs 1,051) and with the assurance that the auto owner would not ferry any Christian from the village.
The team has started interacting with the paralysed family members for five minutes, when a Christian villager; Jesaya Nayak entered the house and informed the team members that it should leave the place as the situation was volatile.
The team went to another house. A fearful group of Christians had assembled there and interacted with them. The fearful Christians said, “We are in a state of shock. Those who have something have moved out the village and we poor people are left behind. What haunts us and saddens us is the administration, the BDO and police, who are hand in glove with RSS. Instead of becoming sensitive to our plight, the administration wants to deprive us of our basic amenities. They have banned the local auto-rickshaws, the only means of transportation in the area from taking Christians passengers. “We are not allowed to bring housing materials nor food provisions or medicines nor allowed to buy anything from the local shops. We do not have any shop of our own. Here, we are struggling to live as human being”, the victims said. The team enquired whether they had complained it before the police, the people replied positively and explained the statement of Inspector in charge, IIC, Tikabali, who said “being a Christian you have to suffer and there is no option’
The team wanted to meet the auto-rickshaw owner and others who have been fined. A villager volunteered to join to meet the auto owner, who has to pay the fine for ferrying the paralytic to the hospital. The auto-rickshaw owner, a pastor, told the team that he had to pay the fine one thousand fifty one rupees despite he had to complain to the police. The team then met Birendra Nayak (name changed and a Hindu himself), who told the team members that he had to pay Rs 5000 to get his tractor released as it was transporting the housing materials for the construction of the house of a Boarder Security Force soldier, which was destroyed during anti-Christian violence. Birendra Nayak went on to add, “It is because the local police takes percentage, (a bribe) and protects the anti-social elements who rule the roost. I informed the local police, but nothing happened”.
Pushpanjali Nayak, the soldier’s mother said who could be contacted over the telephone, told the group, “this incident shocked her army son, who became ill and left the village in disgust. We are presently living under polythene like a cowshed without roof and floor and proper wall with little money that we have had managed to collect, yet we cannot build our houses. We had brought sand for the house and were taken away by RSS. Our life is hell here”. She continued sobbing as she narrated. The former pastor, who says that he would openly practise the faith if situations become normal adds, “The sand that the tractor brought for the house was taken away to build the temple in the village”.
Incidentally, there are a group of 15 police persons stationed in the village and they are mute spectators to these incidents.
The team then headed for Keredi village under Phulbani block and went to a Christian household. The team found a huge photo of Lord Krishna. Naresh Digal, an ex-army man (name changed) explained that he had to” live like a Hindu as they are four households in the locality. The environment is quite hostile and there is no support from the administration. He went on to further state that his neighbour, an ex-army man, had to bear the brunt of RSS people and his house was destroyed. He filed the complaints and after eight days police came to see and left the place even without entering the broken house. The life time earnings of his neighbour are gone. What will he invest on the family’s future? What is the use of this way of life if there is no support from anywhere?” The woman, who shared that her cousin has become a nun, said”we are waiting for the day when we could be free to practise the religion of our choice. "Not sure when the day would dawn.”
The team then went to Gandapadar village in Minia gram panchayat in Phiringia block. It was deep in the interior. It was not difficult to identify the Christians’ houses. The woman of the house welcomed into the repaired house. The team saw a huge framed photo of Lord Shiva on the wall. When asked about the photo, she changed her face and struggled to explain,” The RSS has given us the photo and a “Tulsi” plant for worship. We have kept as often they come to check whether we reconverted to Christianity. We know we can never leave our faith.” The villagers also stated that almost all the houses in the village have two photos; that of Jesus and Shiva. Tarabati Digal explained that there are 10 families still living outside the village.
Signed by Peoples’ Fact Finding Report Team:
Advocate Nicholas Barla, tribal activist leader,
Advocate Marcus, social worker,
Jugal Kishore Ranjit, dalit human right activist
Ajay Kumar Singh, human right activist
8th November 2010, Phulbani, Kandhamal, Orissa
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
KANDHAMAL FACT SHEET SEPTEMBER 2010
LEST WE FORGET
[Based on Archbishop Raphael Cheenath’s latest Memorandum to Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik AT THEIR MEETING IN Bhubaneswar on 13 September 2010]
1. EXISTENCE OF REFUGEE CAMPS: In spite of the fact that the relief camps were officially closed by the Orissa Government in the fist week of September, 2009, there are large numbers of victims living in more than a dozen make-shift shelters in Kandhamal. When the relief camps were closed in Sept, 2009, about 3500 refugees were sent out who had no other choice except live in temporary shelters. They live in the following villages even today ( Beheragaon, Tukangia, Phirigada, Godoguda, Penala, Dondingia, Tudubadi, Anandnagar, Telingia, Dagapadar, Sartaguda, Hatpada, Tatamaha and Badabanga).
2 TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN: There are reports in the papers that large scale trafficking in women and girls are going on in Orissa. Communal violence has, perhaps, given an opportunity to the miscreants to prey on the hapless victims. Unless this is effectively stopped by the Government, Orissa too would be soon an established flesh trade centre.
3. DISPLACEMENT, REHABILITATION: Restitution and Rehabilitation to follow the international standards see in paragraphs 16-18 and 25-29 of the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and paragraphs 52 to 68 of the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Developments based Evictions and Displacement, 2007.
4. RIGHT TO RETURN TO THEIR OWN HOMES: The State should recognize the Internally Displaced Persons’ right to return to their homes and create all possible enabling conditions to facilitate such safe return accordance with the above standards. Today the refugees return with fear and after their return they still live in fear of further attacks.
5. COMPENSATION PACKAGE: In order to estimate and determine compensation for the losses which the people have suffered an independent committee should be set up. The committee should take into account the opinion of the victims otherwise it would be only a one-sided calculation. Therefore, it is important to consult the victims to know how much property they have lost and how many lost their lives. In the case of Kandhamal communal valence the victims were never consulted. The compensation given to them has been, arbitrary and grossly inadequate, and possibly vindictive.
Compensation should be a package which should include not only houses, but the household things that normally should belong to a family and some financial assistance for the families who had no employment for nearly two years. Such package should take care of the needs of a family who has been displaced during violence.
6. THE INJURED AND THE WIDOWS: Adequate compensation should be given to those injured during violence, widows whose husbands were killed or missing, the families of those who were killed, or missing.
7. The victims of communal violence should be approached with sympathy
From a humanitarian point of view compensation given to the victims should have been a sign of compassion and sympathy to the poor victims. In many cases, the rules and regulations were absolutely strictly imposed on the victims that even the compensating allotted to them was very slow in coming and in some cases not at all given to them. In communal violence where victims lose everything and suffer so much, the help should be given with a sense of urgency.
8. WAIVE OFF LOANS: During the communal violence and its aftermath people had taken loan since they did not have any employment. Even now they are without any job since a large number of them are still displaced. Such loans could be waved off so that the victims could live without anxiety and earn something for their day to day living.
9. SETTLEMENT OF LAND: Some of the victims do not have land patta [land allotment letter], others have no land, some have disputed land. Unless these are settled the construction of houses can not proceed. On 25th July 2009, 58 cases for land settlements have been given to the Distinct Magistrate; unless these are settled , house construction slows down.
10. FORCIBLE CONVERSION TO HINDUISM: It is reported that the refugees live in 27 villages in make-shift shelter. In more than ten (10) villages Christians are forced to live as Hindus. For instances, Betticola, Beheragaon, Kutulumba, Mundarigon, Kalingia, Santikia, Bindugan, Rotingia, Bodimunda and Dodopanka. This is totally contrary to the freedom of Religion Act which the Orissa Government upholds with great vigour. The Administration which claims secular credentials should not condone such violence.
11. COMPENSATION TO CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS HOUSES: The RTI has recorded 233 churches and prayer halls, but it is estimated that there are 21 churches more which are not included in this list. During the communal violence in 2007 too about 200 churches and payer halls were destroyed. No consultation was made with the victims when compensation was fixed which is only a pittance and is not at all proportionate to the colossal destruction of property. In fact the compensation given to the churches amounts to about one tenth of the total cost.
12. HATE CAMPAIGN: The Government machinery should be alert to prevent hate-campaign that brews hate mobilization and religious and caste-based discriminative activities. The communal carnage in Kandhamal is the result of such hate-campaign that was going on in the State for decades, unfortunately unhindered by the State authorities.
13. MOB RULE: It is a very dangerous development in the country and also in Orissa that the mob is taking over the responsibility of controlling the Law and Order situation. If two or three hundred hooligan can control the situation what is the use of police, courts and civil administration? If one or two hard core criminals can take the whole administration, even the courts, for a ride, the very foundation of democracy is at stake. Daily shows on all the TV. channels prove amply what we have said. Often the victims are victimized by the administration.
[Based on Archbishop Raphael Cheenath’s latest Memorandum to Chief Minister Naveen Pattnaik AT THEIR MEETING IN Bhubaneswar on 13 September 2010]
1. EXISTENCE OF REFUGEE CAMPS: In spite of the fact that the relief camps were officially closed by the Orissa Government in the fist week of September, 2009, there are large numbers of victims living in more than a dozen make-shift shelters in Kandhamal. When the relief camps were closed in Sept, 2009, about 3500 refugees were sent out who had no other choice except live in temporary shelters. They live in the following villages even today ( Beheragaon, Tukangia, Phirigada, Godoguda, Penala, Dondingia, Tudubadi, Anandnagar, Telingia, Dagapadar, Sartaguda, Hatpada, Tatamaha and Badabanga).
2 TRAFFICKING IN WOMEN: There are reports in the papers that large scale trafficking in women and girls are going on in Orissa. Communal violence has, perhaps, given an opportunity to the miscreants to prey on the hapless victims. Unless this is effectively stopped by the Government, Orissa too would be soon an established flesh trade centre.
3. DISPLACEMENT, REHABILITATION: Restitution and Rehabilitation to follow the international standards see in paragraphs 16-18 and 25-29 of the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and paragraphs 52 to 68 of the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on the Developments based Evictions and Displacement, 2007.
4. RIGHT TO RETURN TO THEIR OWN HOMES: The State should recognize the Internally Displaced Persons’ right to return to their homes and create all possible enabling conditions to facilitate such safe return accordance with the above standards. Today the refugees return with fear and after their return they still live in fear of further attacks.
5. COMPENSATION PACKAGE: In order to estimate and determine compensation for the losses which the people have suffered an independent committee should be set up. The committee should take into account the opinion of the victims otherwise it would be only a one-sided calculation. Therefore, it is important to consult the victims to know how much property they have lost and how many lost their lives. In the case of Kandhamal communal valence the victims were never consulted. The compensation given to them has been, arbitrary and grossly inadequate, and possibly vindictive.
Compensation should be a package which should include not only houses, but the household things that normally should belong to a family and some financial assistance for the families who had no employment for nearly two years. Such package should take care of the needs of a family who has been displaced during violence.
6. THE INJURED AND THE WIDOWS: Adequate compensation should be given to those injured during violence, widows whose husbands were killed or missing, the families of those who were killed, or missing.
7. The victims of communal violence should be approached with sympathy
From a humanitarian point of view compensation given to the victims should have been a sign of compassion and sympathy to the poor victims. In many cases, the rules and regulations were absolutely strictly imposed on the victims that even the compensating allotted to them was very slow in coming and in some cases not at all given to them. In communal violence where victims lose everything and suffer so much, the help should be given with a sense of urgency.
8. WAIVE OFF LOANS: During the communal violence and its aftermath people had taken loan since they did not have any employment. Even now they are without any job since a large number of them are still displaced. Such loans could be waved off so that the victims could live without anxiety and earn something for their day to day living.
9. SETTLEMENT OF LAND: Some of the victims do not have land patta [land allotment letter], others have no land, some have disputed land. Unless these are settled the construction of houses can not proceed. On 25th July 2009, 58 cases for land settlements have been given to the Distinct Magistrate; unless these are settled , house construction slows down.
10. FORCIBLE CONVERSION TO HINDUISM: It is reported that the refugees live in 27 villages in make-shift shelter. In more than ten (10) villages Christians are forced to live as Hindus. For instances, Betticola, Beheragaon, Kutulumba, Mundarigon, Kalingia, Santikia, Bindugan, Rotingia, Bodimunda and Dodopanka. This is totally contrary to the freedom of Religion Act which the Orissa Government upholds with great vigour. The Administration which claims secular credentials should not condone such violence.
11. COMPENSATION TO CHURCHES AND RELIGIOUS HOUSES: The RTI has recorded 233 churches and prayer halls, but it is estimated that there are 21 churches more which are not included in this list. During the communal violence in 2007 too about 200 churches and payer halls were destroyed. No consultation was made with the victims when compensation was fixed which is only a pittance and is not at all proportionate to the colossal destruction of property. In fact the compensation given to the churches amounts to about one tenth of the total cost.
12. HATE CAMPAIGN: The Government machinery should be alert to prevent hate-campaign that brews hate mobilization and religious and caste-based discriminative activities. The communal carnage in Kandhamal is the result of such hate-campaign that was going on in the State for decades, unfortunately unhindered by the State authorities.
13. MOB RULE: It is a very dangerous development in the country and also in Orissa that the mob is taking over the responsibility of controlling the Law and Order situation. If two or three hundred hooligan can control the situation what is the use of police, courts and civil administration? If one or two hard core criminals can take the whole administration, even the courts, for a ride, the very foundation of democracy is at stake. Daily shows on all the TV. channels prove amply what we have said. Often the victims are victimized by the administration.
Friday, September 3, 2010
A must read on Kandhamal
Date:04/09/2010 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2010/09/04/stories/2010090454521300.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back
Opinion - News Analysis
Three pogroms held together by a common thread
Vidya Subrahmaniam
Secular, democratic India has seen pogroms against all three significant minorities — Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.
– PHOTO: LINGARAJ PANDA
DECEPTIVE: An idyllic scene does not mask the trauma. A burnt church in Kandhamal, Orissa.
The accounts of murder, arson, and crimes against women sounded horribly familiar: Each detail, each grisly fact seemed taken out of a script enacted before; the sequence of events was as predictable as the shattering, gut-wrenching climax.
It was like a macabre replay of Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984, as 43 communal violence victims from Orissa — who had come all the way to the national Capital — testified recently before the National People's Tribunal on Kandhamal headed by A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. As the narratives ended, the audience was left with another chilling thought: In secular, democratic India, there had been pogroms against all three significant minorities — Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.
Kanaka Rekha Nayak, from village Budedipada, spoke of her husband, Parikhita, being beaten up, murdered and quartered as her family helplessly watched (FIR no: 58 U/S 147/148/436/302/201/149 IPC, dated August 28 2008). Today, Kanaka is in hiding with her two minor children.
Priyatama Nayak, from village Barpalli, said her husband, Abhimanyu, was tied to a tree and burnt alive in her presence. Amidst religious chants the mob looted her house and destroyed it. Priyatama's young son went to the local police station and begged for help. The police reached the village 10 days later by which time dogs had preyed on Abhimanyu's body. (FIR no 90 u/s 147/148/436/506/302/149, dated August 31, 2008). And though Priyatama named her husband's killers in the FIR, the police made no arrests. In March 2009, following unceasing threats from those named in the FIR, Priyatama, who had also petitioned the Chief Minister and the Governor, took her case to the Orissa Human Rights Commission, which ordered the Kandhamal District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police to hold an inquiry into the case and take action against the errant policemen.
Twenty-four-year-old Narsingho Digal from Dudukagaon testified that a 600-strong armed gang looted and destroyed his house. His mother was gang-raped and his parents were dragged into the forests and murdered. Narasingho, who — like many other Kandhamal Christians — faces a social boycott, said the rioters had made his conversion back to Hinduism a condition for his being allowed to return to his village.
Many of the victims said they spotted Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Manoj Pradhan among the attackers. In June this year, a fast-track court in Orissa sentenced Pradhan to seven years' rigorous imprisonment.
The Orissa violence, which targeted Dalit-tribal Christians, was undoubtedly smaller in scale compared to Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984. Human rights estimates of deaths, damages and sexual violations are many times higher in all three cases, but going only by the government figures for the dead, there were 38 killed in Kandhamal in Orissa, 1,180 murdered (including Hindus killed in Godhra and in police firing) in the 15 affected districts of Gujarat, and 2,700 put to death in the national Capital. Yet despite these variations, the three pogroms could have been written, produced and directed by a single satanic mind, judging by the astonishing similarity in the detail and sequence of events and the stunning brutality of the crimes committed.
Tribunal foreword
In his November 2002 foreword to the report of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, which collected 2,094 oral and written testimonies from Gujarat's victim-survivors as well as human rights groups, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer said: “The gravamen of this pogrom-like operation was that the administration reversed its constitutional role, and by omission and commission, engineered the loot, ravishment and murder which was methodically perpetrated through planned process …”
Eight years later, the jury at the Kandhamal Tribunal had similar words to say: “The jury records its shock and deep concern for the heinous and brutal manner in which the members of the Christian community were killed, dismembered, sexually assaulted and tortured … There was rampant and systematic looting and destruction of houses and places of worship and means of livelihood … The jury is further convinced that the communal violence in Kandhamal was the consequence of a subversion of constitutional governance in which state agents were complicit.”
‘Action-reaction' theory
When, in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's 1984 assassination, thousands of Sikhs were massacred on the streets of Delhi, the commonly-held view was that it was an aberration brought about by an extraordinary situation. Comparisons were made with the 1947 Partition riots but few could have known at that time that the clinically planned and executed anti-Sikh pogrom would serve as a model for two more episodes of mass aggression against minorities.
Consider the features of the 1984 violence: Indira Gandhi's assassination by two Sikh guards was the “action” which justified the “reactive” killings. Rajiv Gandhi's insensitive equation of the mob rage to tremors arising from a falling tree was taken as licence by the rioters to plunder, rape and kill. Members of the ruling establishment lent tacit support to the killings, and in some instances were seen directing the violence. The police abandoned their protective instincts, becoming either bystanders or collaborators in the crimes. The hooligans did not just kill, they used innovative techniques to kill, such as fitting burning car tyres over the necks of little, helpless children. In the days following the anti-Sikh orgy, the community was further victimised by an unwritten social boycott.
As in Delhi, so in Gujarat and Orissa. Delhi 1984 went beyond “an eye for an eye” to justify the extermination of an entire community for the perceived crimes of a handful. It established the legitimacy of the administration and the police slipping into supporting roles in mob violence. It also established that killing was not enough, killing must be perverse. In Gujarat, Muslims as a whole had to pay for Godhra. Here too, the action-reaction theory was propounded at the highest level, with the police and the administration wilfully abdicating their duties.
The testimonies recorded by the Krishna Iyer Tribunal brought out the sadistic, bestial nature of the Gujarat killings: “The widespread violence that targeted Muslims in urban and rural Gujarat was marked by utter bestiality and brutality … Evidence recorded before us shows how in the macabre dance of death, human beings were quartered and the killing protracted while the terrorised survivors looked on …” Violence over, the majority community enforced a social and economic boycott against Muslims.
In the “action-reaction” sequence in Orissa, rioters targeted the Dalit-tribal Christian community for revenge killings despite the lack of direct evidence linking the community to the murder of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati. Here the Chief Minister, to his credit, did not justify the killings. On the contrary, he appeared contrite and eventually broke his ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party. Yet during the violence, the levers of administration remained cruelly unresponsive to the cries of Kandhamal's Christian citizenry. As in Delhi and Gujarat, the victims found the police curiously missing or standing by, when the mobs, armed to the teeth and shouting inflammatory slogans, went on the rampage. The torture and violence were again extreme; murder was by burning alive, by dismembering the person. And as previously, the violence was followed by a crippling social boycott.
Abuse of women
All three pogroms had another common feature: Rampant abuse of women. Women were gang-raped, invariably in front of their families, not for sexual gratification but as a demonstration of power, to heap humiliation on male relatives. At the hearing organised by the Kandhamal Tribunal, Vrinda Grover, a member of the jury, remarked that the Orissa rioters had “used women's bodies as sites for punishment.” The Hindu of September 30, 2008 reported the case of a Catholic nun who was stripped naked and brutally gang-raped in front of a police post with 12 policemen from the Orissa State Armed Police present and watching. The Catholic priest who was with her was mercilessly thrashed for refusing to participate in the atrocity. Incidents of rape in Gujarat 2002 have been too well documented to bear repetition here.
But here again, the trend was set 26 years ago in Delhi. Until recently, the dominant perception about 1984 was that the mob violence largely spared the women.
The myth was conclusively demolished in 2007 following publication of the painstakingly documented book, “When a tree shook Delhi”. Lifting the “veil of silence” over the rape cases, authors Manoj Mitta and H.S. Phoolka pieced together evidence placed before the Nanavati Commission to establish rape as a commonly used weapon in the anti-Sikh pogrom.
In one case, the rioters killed all the men in the family, raped the woman of the house in front of her young son, and left her naked so that she could not go out to save the child when he too was dragged out and burnt alive (case reported in Manushi magazine and submitted to the Commission).
The Kandhamal tribunal, as the Krishna Iyer tribunal before it, noted the “institutionalised bias of State agencies, their deliberate dereliction of constitutionally mandated duties, their connivance with communal forces, participation in and support to the violence, and a deliberate scuttling of the processes of justice …” Each of the findings applied to Delhi 1984 as well.
Perhaps that is why, a questioner asked the jury of the Kandhamal tribunal, if it was not a shame that 26 years after 1984 — and two more pogroms later — India was still trying to find a solution to planned violence against minorities.
© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Back
Opinion - News Analysis
Three pogroms held together by a common thread
Vidya Subrahmaniam
Secular, democratic India has seen pogroms against all three significant minorities — Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.
– PHOTO: LINGARAJ PANDA
DECEPTIVE: An idyllic scene does not mask the trauma. A burnt church in Kandhamal, Orissa.
The accounts of murder, arson, and crimes against women sounded horribly familiar: Each detail, each grisly fact seemed taken out of a script enacted before; the sequence of events was as predictable as the shattering, gut-wrenching climax.
It was like a macabre replay of Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984, as 43 communal violence victims from Orissa — who had come all the way to the national Capital — testified recently before the National People's Tribunal on Kandhamal headed by A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. As the narratives ended, the audience was left with another chilling thought: In secular, democratic India, there had been pogroms against all three significant minorities — Sikhs, Muslims and Christians.
Kanaka Rekha Nayak, from village Budedipada, spoke of her husband, Parikhita, being beaten up, murdered and quartered as her family helplessly watched (FIR no: 58 U/S 147/148/436/302/201/149 IPC, dated August 28 2008). Today, Kanaka is in hiding with her two minor children.
Priyatama Nayak, from village Barpalli, said her husband, Abhimanyu, was tied to a tree and burnt alive in her presence. Amidst religious chants the mob looted her house and destroyed it. Priyatama's young son went to the local police station and begged for help. The police reached the village 10 days later by which time dogs had preyed on Abhimanyu's body. (FIR no 90 u/s 147/148/436/506/302/149, dated August 31, 2008). And though Priyatama named her husband's killers in the FIR, the police made no arrests. In March 2009, following unceasing threats from those named in the FIR, Priyatama, who had also petitioned the Chief Minister and the Governor, took her case to the Orissa Human Rights Commission, which ordered the Kandhamal District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police to hold an inquiry into the case and take action against the errant policemen.
Twenty-four-year-old Narsingho Digal from Dudukagaon testified that a 600-strong armed gang looted and destroyed his house. His mother was gang-raped and his parents were dragged into the forests and murdered. Narasingho, who — like many other Kandhamal Christians — faces a social boycott, said the rioters had made his conversion back to Hinduism a condition for his being allowed to return to his village.
Many of the victims said they spotted Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Manoj Pradhan among the attackers. In June this year, a fast-track court in Orissa sentenced Pradhan to seven years' rigorous imprisonment.
The Orissa violence, which targeted Dalit-tribal Christians, was undoubtedly smaller in scale compared to Gujarat 2002 and Delhi 1984. Human rights estimates of deaths, damages and sexual violations are many times higher in all three cases, but going only by the government figures for the dead, there were 38 killed in Kandhamal in Orissa, 1,180 murdered (including Hindus killed in Godhra and in police firing) in the 15 affected districts of Gujarat, and 2,700 put to death in the national Capital. Yet despite these variations, the three pogroms could have been written, produced and directed by a single satanic mind, judging by the astonishing similarity in the detail and sequence of events and the stunning brutality of the crimes committed.
Tribunal foreword
In his November 2002 foreword to the report of the Concerned Citizens Tribunal, which collected 2,094 oral and written testimonies from Gujarat's victim-survivors as well as human rights groups, Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer said: “The gravamen of this pogrom-like operation was that the administration reversed its constitutional role, and by omission and commission, engineered the loot, ravishment and murder which was methodically perpetrated through planned process …”
Eight years later, the jury at the Kandhamal Tribunal had similar words to say: “The jury records its shock and deep concern for the heinous and brutal manner in which the members of the Christian community were killed, dismembered, sexually assaulted and tortured … There was rampant and systematic looting and destruction of houses and places of worship and means of livelihood … The jury is further convinced that the communal violence in Kandhamal was the consequence of a subversion of constitutional governance in which state agents were complicit.”
‘Action-reaction' theory
When, in the aftermath of Indira Gandhi's 1984 assassination, thousands of Sikhs were massacred on the streets of Delhi, the commonly-held view was that it was an aberration brought about by an extraordinary situation. Comparisons were made with the 1947 Partition riots but few could have known at that time that the clinically planned and executed anti-Sikh pogrom would serve as a model for two more episodes of mass aggression against minorities.
Consider the features of the 1984 violence: Indira Gandhi's assassination by two Sikh guards was the “action” which justified the “reactive” killings. Rajiv Gandhi's insensitive equation of the mob rage to tremors arising from a falling tree was taken as licence by the rioters to plunder, rape and kill. Members of the ruling establishment lent tacit support to the killings, and in some instances were seen directing the violence. The police abandoned their protective instincts, becoming either bystanders or collaborators in the crimes. The hooligans did not just kill, they used innovative techniques to kill, such as fitting burning car tyres over the necks of little, helpless children. In the days following the anti-Sikh orgy, the community was further victimised by an unwritten social boycott.
As in Delhi, so in Gujarat and Orissa. Delhi 1984 went beyond “an eye for an eye” to justify the extermination of an entire community for the perceived crimes of a handful. It established the legitimacy of the administration and the police slipping into supporting roles in mob violence. It also established that killing was not enough, killing must be perverse. In Gujarat, Muslims as a whole had to pay for Godhra. Here too, the action-reaction theory was propounded at the highest level, with the police and the administration wilfully abdicating their duties.
The testimonies recorded by the Krishna Iyer Tribunal brought out the sadistic, bestial nature of the Gujarat killings: “The widespread violence that targeted Muslims in urban and rural Gujarat was marked by utter bestiality and brutality … Evidence recorded before us shows how in the macabre dance of death, human beings were quartered and the killing protracted while the terrorised survivors looked on …” Violence over, the majority community enforced a social and economic boycott against Muslims.
In the “action-reaction” sequence in Orissa, rioters targeted the Dalit-tribal Christian community for revenge killings despite the lack of direct evidence linking the community to the murder of Swami Lakshmanananda Saraswati. Here the Chief Minister, to his credit, did not justify the killings. On the contrary, he appeared contrite and eventually broke his ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party. Yet during the violence, the levers of administration remained cruelly unresponsive to the cries of Kandhamal's Christian citizenry. As in Delhi and Gujarat, the victims found the police curiously missing or standing by, when the mobs, armed to the teeth and shouting inflammatory slogans, went on the rampage. The torture and violence were again extreme; murder was by burning alive, by dismembering the person. And as previously, the violence was followed by a crippling social boycott.
Abuse of women
All three pogroms had another common feature: Rampant abuse of women. Women were gang-raped, invariably in front of their families, not for sexual gratification but as a demonstration of power, to heap humiliation on male relatives. At the hearing organised by the Kandhamal Tribunal, Vrinda Grover, a member of the jury, remarked that the Orissa rioters had “used women's bodies as sites for punishment.” The Hindu of September 30, 2008 reported the case of a Catholic nun who was stripped naked and brutally gang-raped in front of a police post with 12 policemen from the Orissa State Armed Police present and watching. The Catholic priest who was with her was mercilessly thrashed for refusing to participate in the atrocity. Incidents of rape in Gujarat 2002 have been too well documented to bear repetition here.
But here again, the trend was set 26 years ago in Delhi. Until recently, the dominant perception about 1984 was that the mob violence largely spared the women.
The myth was conclusively demolished in 2007 following publication of the painstakingly documented book, “When a tree shook Delhi”. Lifting the “veil of silence” over the rape cases, authors Manoj Mitta and H.S. Phoolka pieced together evidence placed before the Nanavati Commission to establish rape as a commonly used weapon in the anti-Sikh pogrom.
In one case, the rioters killed all the men in the family, raped the woman of the house in front of her young son, and left her naked so that she could not go out to save the child when he too was dragged out and burnt alive (case reported in Manushi magazine and submitted to the Commission).
The Kandhamal tribunal, as the Krishna Iyer tribunal before it, noted the “institutionalised bias of State agencies, their deliberate dereliction of constitutionally mandated duties, their connivance with communal forces, participation in and support to the violence, and a deliberate scuttling of the processes of justice …” Each of the findings applied to Delhi 1984 as well.
Perhaps that is why, a questioner asked the jury of the Kandhamal tribunal, if it was not a shame that 26 years after 1984 — and two more pogroms later — India was still trying to find a solution to planned violence against minorities.
© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
NATIONAL PEOPLE’S TRIBUNAL ON KANDHAMAL
JURY’S PRELIMINARY FINDINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS
24 AUGUST 2010
The National People’s Tribunal (NPT) on Kandhamal, held in New Delhi on 22-24 August 2010, was organized by the National Solidarity Forum - a countrywide solidarity platform of concerned social activists, media persons, researchers, legal experts, film makers, artists, writers, scientists and civil society organizations to assist the victims and survivors of the Kandhamal violence 2008 to seek justice, accountability and peace and to restore the victim-survivors’ right to a dignified life.
The jury of the NPT was headed by Justice A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. Joining him as jury members were Harsh Mander (member of National Advisory Council), Mahesh Bhatt (film maker and activist), Miloon Kothari (former UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Housing), P.S.Krishnan (retired Secretary, Government of India), Rabi Das (senior journalist based in Bhubaneswar), Ruth Manorama (women and dalit rights activist), Sukumar Muralidharan (Delhi-based free lance journalist), Syeeda Hameed (member of Planning Commission, Government of India), Vahida Nainar (expert on international law, mass crimes and gender), Vinod Raina (scientist and social activist with a specific focus on right to education), Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat (former Chief of Naval Staff) and Vrinda Grover (advocate, Delhi High Court).
******
Introduction
Thousands of dalits and tribals belonging to the Christian minorities in the Kandhamal region of Orissa were victims of organized violence starting in August 2007. According to government figures during the last bout of violence from August to December 2008, in Kandhamal district alone more than 600 villages were ransacked, 5600 houses were looted and burnt, 54000 people were left homeless, 38 people were murdered. Human rights groups estimate that over 100 people were killed, including women, disabled and aged persons and children; and an unestimated number suffered severe physical injuries and mental trauma. While there are reports of four women being gang-raped, many more victims of sexual assault are believed to have been intimidated into silence. 295 churches and other places of worship, big and small, were destroyed. 13 schools, colleges, and offices of 5 non-profit organizations damaged. About 30,000 people were uprooted and lived in relief camps and continue to be displaced. During this period about 2,000 people belonging to minority communities were forced to repudiate their Christian faith. More than 10,000 children had their education severely disrupted due to displacement and fear. Today, after two years, the situation has not improved, although the administration time and again claims it is peaceful and has returned to normalcy. With a view to create conditions for justice and accountability for the violence, the National Solidarity Forum organized a National People’s Tribunal (NPT) on 22-24 August 2010 at the Constitution Club in Delhi. The objectives of the Tribunal were:
1. To provide a platform for victim-survivors and their families to voice their experiences, perceptions, demands and aspirations to civil society at large;
2. To study and analyse the long-term and short-term causes and impact of the Kandhamal violence;
3. To assess the role, conduct and responsibility of various organizations, groups of individuals or persons, in influencing, precipitating and escalating the violence;
4. To assess the role played by the state and district administration and public officials, including the police, before, during and after the pogrom;
5. To assess the functioning of the criminal justice system for fixing criminal accountability and prosecuting the guilty;
6. To study and analyse the various rights of victims and survivors that have been violated during the violence and thereafter;
7. To recommend both short-term and long-term remedial measures for promoting an efficient delivery of justice and reparations, and for strengthening peace-building, prevention of communal violence and secularism; and
8. To present the findings and recommendations before civil society, including the media, and to persuade the government and other agencies to pursue the necessary follow up action to restore dignity, right to life, justice and peace to the victim-survivors of Kandhamal violence.
The Tribunal heard 43 victims, survivors and their representatives, and 15 experts who presented studies / fact-finding reports on the Kandhamal violence. Documentation related to each case, consisting of affidavits, court documents, medical and other supporting documents, as well as copies of reports and studies on the violence were placed before the jury for its perusal. The depositions were on a range of issues including a) adivasi and dalit rights to religious and culture freedom; b) role of police, administration and the criminal justice system; c) issues relating to housing, compensation, relief, rehabilitation, food and livelihood, displacement and migration of the victims; d) impact on children and their education; e) gender violence and violations of human rights; and f) role of media, political parties, and civil society in peace and reconciliation processes. Formal invitations were extended to the Ministry of Minority Affairs, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Ministry of Women’s Development and Child Welfare, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, as well as the National Human Rights Commission, National Commission for Minorities, National Commission for Scheduled Castes, National Commission for Scheduled Tribes and National Commission for Women to participate in the proceedings of the Tribunal. However, there was no participation from the concerned ministries and commissions.
PREAMBLE
The jury records its shock and deep concern for the heinous and brutal manner in which the members of the Christian community, a vast majority of who are dalits and tribals were killed, dismembered, sexually assaulted and tortured. The deliberate destruction of evidence pertaining to these crimes came to the attention to the jury. There was rampant and systematic looting and destruction of houses and places of worship and means of livelihood. The victim-survivors continue to be intimidated and systematically denied protection and access to justice.
From the testimonies heard and the detailed reports received, the jury is convinced that the carnage in Kandhamal is an act of communalism mainly directed against the Christian community, a vast majority of who are of scheduled caste origin and anyone who supported or worked with the community. It is clear to us that there was deliberate strategy of targeting of the community, fed by groups of the Hindutva ideology such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal and the active members of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The jury is further convinced that the communal violence in Kandhamal was the consequence of a subversion of constitutional governance in which state agents were complicit.
The jury acknowledges and appreciates the courage, determination and resilience of the victim-survivors and the human rights defenders supporting them, who have braved physical, psychological and economic hardships and intimidation to tell their stories before this Tribunal, thereby breaking the culture of silence. After listening to the myriad accounts of all the victim-survivors and their representatives, as well as the experts who presented a summary of their studies / fact-finding reports on the Kandhamal violence, the jury offers the following preliminary findings and recommendations:
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
The jury observes that a majority of victim-survivors and their families are from marginalized groups, particularly from the dalit and adivasi (SC and ST) Christian community, and that most live in abject poverty and on the brink of despair. The victim-survivors and their families are yet to obtain justice, rehabilitation or regain a right to life with dignity. The victims/survivors have undergone incredible hardships, including physical and psychological trauma, threats and humiliation, deprivation of a dignity, an extensive loss of movable and immovable property, a source and means of livelihood and their right to a decent standard of living - including food, housing, education and health services. They have faced persecution in all its forms – such as social and economic boycott as well as religious, caste-based and cultural discrimination. They live under a constant threat to their lives and personal security and continue to suffer from trauma. The consequence is that even two year after the outbreak of the violence, the victim-survivors are unable to return to their villages and resume their normal way of life. They continue to be subjected to constant and overt manifestations of communal, caste and class-based discrimination. All victim-survivors and their representatives who deposed before the Tribunal strongly articulated their demand for justice and security.
The jury observes that communal forces have used religious conversions as an issue for political mobilisation and to incite horrific forms of violence and discrimination against the Christians of SC origin and their supporters in Kandhamal. The object is to dominate them and ensure that they never rise above their low caste status and remain subservient to the upper castes. The jury observes, with deep concern, that a range of coercive tactics have been used by the communal forces for conversion or re-conversion of a person into the Hindu fold, including threat, intimidation, social and economic boycott and coercion, as well as the institutionalization of humiliating rituals. The state and district administrations have, on no occasion, intervened to protect the freedom of religion and freedom of expression.
The jury observes, with concern, the institutionalised communal and casteist bias of state agencies, and their deliberate dereliction of constitutionally mandated duties, their connivance with communal forces, participation in and support to the violence and a deliberate scuttling of processes of justice through acts of commission and omission. The state agencies have blatantly failed to extend much-needed institutional support to victim-survivors and protect them from ostracism , socio-economic boycott and subjugation by non-state actors.
SPECIFIC OBSERVATIONS
A. State’s Complicity and Collusion
• Institutional Bias: All testimonies and reports have pointed towards the complicity of the police – senior officers as well as the constabulary – during the phase of violence, and their collusion with the wrongdoers during the phase of investigation and prosecution. Based on the testimonies, the jury concludes that this was not an aberration of a few individual police men, but evidence of an institutional bias against the targeted Christian community.
• Failure to Prevent the Violence: The police deliberately failed to prevent the violence by a) non-implementation of the recommendations made by the National Commission for Minorities in its reports of January and April 2008; b) permitting the funeral procession of Swami Lakshmananda through a 170 kilometre route through communally sensitive areas; c) allowing hate speeches and incitement to violence; d) allowing a series of programmes by the communal forces (such as the bandh of 25 August 2008, shraddhanjali sabhas and dharnas by Hindu religous leaders). In particular, the permission given by the state administration to the funeral procession cannot, in any way, be a mere lapse of judgment. The state agencies displayed long overdue political resolve when they stopped VHP leader Praveen Togadia from visiting Kandhamal in March 2010. This late awakening was however, of little help to the victim-survivors of the district.
• Suspension of Police Officials: Many witnesses deposed about the failure of the police to protect them from the violence and their refusal to register First Information Reports subsequently. There were long delayed actions to check police complicity, when five police officials were suspended for misconduct and negligence in connection with the sexual assault on Sister Meena, and the identification of 13 police officials for failure to protect persons and property in Kandhamal by A.K. Upadhyay, DIG (Training).
• Destruction of Evidence by Public Officials: The jury is constrained to observe that public officials have colluded in the destruction of evidence and there is testimony directly implicating the District Collector in this misdemeanour (Case No. 24)
B. Communal Forces, Freedom of Religion and Discrimination
• Forcible Conversions: Testimonies pointed towards forcible conversion of Christians to Hinduism during the violence and subsequently, as a condition for their return to their villages. No known action has been initiated against any of the perpetrators by the administration under the provisions either of criminal law, or the state’s Freedom of Religion Act.
• Serious Violation of Religious Freedom: The violent intimidation of the Christian community, accompanied by social sanctions against the practice of Christianity, the destruction and desecration of places of worship, the forcible conversions to Hinduism, the killing and torture of victims and survivors for their refusal to repudiate their faith, are all acts violative of the constitutional guarantees of right to life, equality and non-discrimination, as well as the right to religious freedom.
• The Role of Hindutva forces: The accused identified in all witness testimonies were members of Hindutva organisations. This is substantiated by the response of Orissa Chief Minister, to a query raised in the state Legislative Assembly, on 23 November 2009. In his written response, Mr. Naveen Patnaik said that pursuant to investigation, 85 members of the RSS, 321 members of the VHP and 118 members of the Bajrang Dal had been arrested.
• Discrimination on the Basis of Caste and Religion: The targeted violence against dalit Christians, as well as the continued discrimination against them are violative of Constitutional guarantees of equality, non-discrimination, right to a dignified life and the prohibition of untouchability. Further, they amount to a serious violation of all provisions of the UN Convention on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a convention ratified by India. The Concluding Observations of its forty-ninth session held in August/September 1996 (as it reviewed India's tenth to fourteenth periodic reports under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination, 1965), the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination affirmed that "the situation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes falls within the scope of" the Convention. The Committee states that "descent" contained in Article 1 of the Convention does not refer solely to race, and includes the situation of scheduled castes and tribes.
C. Sexual Violence and Other Gender Concerns
• Silence and Invisibility: The jury observes, with deep concern, that silence continues to prevail in matters of sexual assault. This applies at all levels, including documenting, reporting, investigating, charging and prosecuting cases. Though witness testimonies show that sexual violence was rampant, there are only five reported cases, and an even smaller number that have been registered and are pending in the courts. One of the testimonies refers to the gang rape (Case No. 3), but none of the accused has been formally charged.
• Special Vulnerability of Women: While all victims and survivors face intimidation and threats, women face the additional danger of sexual violence not just against themselves but also against their daughters (Case No. 12). The immediate consequence of such threats is a hightened sense of vulnerability and a restriction on their movement. The jury observes that the threat of sexual assault against women continues to be used as a tool to prevent families from returning to their villages, to prevent women from resuming their livelihood activities, and pursuing justice.
• Violation of international covenants: The pattern of violence against women is violative of constitutional guarantees of equality, non-discrimination on the ground of sex as well as a right to life with dignity. In addition, the attacks violate international standards, including the UN Convention on Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEDAW) which has been ratified by India. The CEDAW Committee, through General Recommendation 19, has clarified that gender-based violence, that is, violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately, amounts to discrimination against women.
D. Failure of the Criminal Justice System
• Arbitrary Exercise of Discretionary Power: The jury observes, with concern, an arbitrary exercise of the discretionary power vested in the police and the prosecuting agencies. In many instances, the police have refused to register FIRs, have delayed registering FIRs by 2-5 months, and dissuaded victim-survivors from registering FIRs and coerced them to omit the names of perpetrators and other details from the FIRs, particularly if they indicated the complicity of public officials or members of communal organizations. Victim-survivors were also shunted between various police stations for registration of FIRs in contexts where their safety was at risk.
• Arrests: Many victim-survivors deposed before the jury that the perpetrators of heinous crimes had not been arrested, and were roaming freely and continuing to threaten, intimidate and humiliate them. Testimonies point to an inordinate delay in arresting the perpetrators, and a failure to arrest many more, contributing to an overall climate of impunity. Honest police officials who attempted to arrest perpetrators were threatened. Testimonies indicate that victim-survivors were often threatened with arrest under fabricated charges in order to silence them and deter them from pursuing justice.
• Investigation & Prosecution: The deliberate destruction of evidence, particularly of killings, through the burning or disposal of bodies, has resulted in the absence of forensic evidence in many cases. Investigations were marked by a neglect of the basic requirements of gathering evidence, which severely impaired the efficacy of the prosecution. Delay in obtaining forensic evidence, failure in obtaining corroborative evidence and the rampant intimidation of victim-survivors and witnesses, have led to many acquittals.
• Appreciation of Evidence by the Fast Track Courts: Upon perusal of judgments, affidavits and statements, the jury concludes that the judicial weighing of evidence failed to recognise the extraordinary context in which these mass crimes have been committed. Minor discrepancies in witness testimonies in court have been given undue weightage, leading to an alarmingly high number of acquittals.
• Judgment and Sentencing: Studies indicate that lenient sentences have been awarded without an acknowledgment of the gravity of the crimes committed and their consequences, both in terms of heinous killings and assault, as well as rampant looting of movable property and destruction of immovable property belonging to the dalit and adivasi Christians. A fine of Rs. 2000 has been mechanically imposed, without any correlation with the value of property destroyed. Further there seems to have been little attempt to apply S. 357 of the Cr.PC which provides for an imposition of a higher amount of fine, which could be recovered and paid to victim-survivors as compensation.
• Gaps in Indian Criminal Law: The jury observes that clear gaps exist in the criminal law to prosecute and punish those responsible for targeted mass violence. These include the absence of investigative procedures and evidentiary rules relating to mass crimes, such as punishing for murder even in the absence of the body of deceased. The protections guaranteed by law to public servants obstruct their accountability. Such gaps make dispensation of justice in contexts of mass violence extremely difficult.
• Relevance of International Criminal Law: The testimonies shows that the Kandhamal violence meets all the elements of Crimes Against Humanity as defined in applicable international law. The jury has come across cases where victims were dismembered or burnt alive, constituting the crime of torture under jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals. (The International Criminal Court’s definition of torture in Article 7 does not require that torture be committed by public officials.) That a victim was forced to drink cow urine and shave his head amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
E. Protection of Victims and Witnesses, Access to Justice & Fair Trial
• Willingness to Testify in Court: Those who deposed before the Tribunal were keen, ready and willing to depose before the Fast Track courts. However, they face severe intimidation and threats. Despite the concerned authorities being informed, no steps have been taken to provide any protection to the witnesses and victim-survivors.
• Hostile Atmosphere in Court: The atmosphere in the trial court (Fast Track courts) was described as hostile. The atmosphere was fearful as the accused were accompanied by a large number of persons representing the accused, and from communal forces. The atmosphere in court is not conducive to a fair trial. There has been no initiative taken, either by the Prosecutor or the court, to hold the proceedings in camera.
• Absence of Safe Passage: Victims who have dared to lodge complaints & witnesses who have courageously given evidence in court are unable to return to their homes. There is no guarantee of safe passage to and from the courts. They are living in other cities and villages, many of them in hiding, as they apprehend danger to their lives.
• Threat of Sexual Assault: Women victims and witnesses have received constant threats of sexual violence and rape to themselves and their daughters. Ironically most of the accused roam freely and live in their villages and homes.
• Absence of Free Legal Aid: Since most of the victim-survivors are from underprivileged communities, there is a dire need for quality legal aid services at state expenses. None of those who deposed before us had been extended free legal aid services. Most victim-survivors have been supported in court through the initiatives of non-profit organizations. The failure of the state to provide free legal aid has contributed substantially to an absence of fair trial.
F. Concerns Related to Children
The most important finding related to children status in Kandahamal is sense of hopelessness, injustice discrimination and fear prevailing among children, threatening to severely impact their growth and development.
• Mental Health: Children are in deep state of mental trauma. There has been no trauma counselling for the affected children and adolescents in Kandhamal. Even today they have night mares of running in the jungle, with the killers in pursuit, are scared of any loud sound and are afraid of people walking in groups or talking loudly.
• Education: Large number of children has dropped out of school due to financial and social insecurity and many have them have gone out for work. Many of them had to discontinue their education due to discrimination meted out to them by the school authority and also in some cases by children in schools. Many children were forced to change school and many of them opted for residential schools out of the state. Post violence many dropped out due to the inability of the families to bear the expenses, fear, and also due to lack of facilities to commute to school.
• Child Labour: Many children have left education and have gone to Kerala, Surat and neighbouring states. Even girls have gone to Udhagamandalam (Ooty)and working in coffee plantation. there is no data available with the district Labour Office regarding the present status of child labour in the state. Last child labour census in the district was done in 1997.
• Child Trafficking: There are rise incidences of trafficking for children, mainly for labour, sexual exploitation and abuse. Though there are no consolidated data on number of children being trafficked post violence in the district, we have come across some instances.
G. Reparations
• Compensation: Compensation for loss of life, injuries and loss of / damage to property has been awarded in an extremely arbitrary manner. The amounts awarded are grossly inadequate and do permit victim-survivors to regain the standards of living enjoyed prior to the violence. The award of compensation does not recognize sexual assault or the extent of loss of house and movable property destruction, the exclusion of which has caused immense difficulties to victim-survivors and their families.
• Relief and Humanitarian Assistance: From the testimonies of victim-survivors and reports, it is evident that the relief camps did not provide for basic facilities such as nutritious food, clean water and sanitation, or adequate security. There was a lack of trauma counselling, medical assistance and other forms of humanitarian assistance that ought to have been made available to all victim-survivors in the relief camps.
• Safe Return or Resettlement: Many victim-survivors have been forced or duped into returning to their villages, where they have faced continuous threat, intimidation and fear of attacks if they did not repudiate their faith. Many victim-survivors and their families continue to live on the outskirts of their villages, without any source of livelihood. The state and district authorities have taken no proactive measures at creating an atmosphere conducive for the safe return of victim-survivors to their villages. By failing to recognize the right of all victim-survivors and their families to a safe return to their villages or resettlement at state expense, the state has grossly violated the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement 1998.
• Reconstruction of Houses and Places of Worship: Some victim-survivors have been provided inadequate compensation for rebuilding their houses and many excluded from an award of compensation altogether. A majority of places of religious worship that had been damaged or destroyed during the violence, have not been re-built. The amounts awarded as compensation to some are grossly inadequate for re-building such structures, while many others have been denied compensation altogether on technical grounds. The jury strongly believes that reconstruction of houses and places of worship at state expense would restore a sense of confidence and justice among the victim-survivors and their families, and restore them to a life with dignity.
• Livelihood and Education: Many educational institutions that had been damaged or destroyed during the violence are yet to be rebuilt, thereby depriving children from victim-survivor communities of their right to education, jeopardizing their future opportunities and causing a generational setback for emerging deprived dalit communities. Many victim-survivors who lost their source of livelihood, including agricultural land and government jobs, due to the mass displacement that took place, have received no assistance from the state for a restoration of the same. Many testimonies presented before the jury highlighted the fact that victim-survivors have been illegally deprived of employment under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act subsequent to the violence.
• Peace-building: Although village level peace committees had been set up, the testimonies before the jury as well as studies and reports indicate that such committees have not enjoyed the confidence of the victim-survivors and have been used as a platform for further intimidation. Notably, there has been no involvement of women in peace-building and negotiating processes, which violates standards set by international law, particularly UN Security Council Resolution 1325.
H. Human Rights Defenders
Non-profit organizations and human rights defenders have been targeted for their role in assisting victims with aid, relief, rehabilitation and process of justice. Victim-survivors have testified with regard to the destruction of personal and official property, attacks and damage to the offices of such organizations. These are contrary to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders that calls upon the State to protect Human Rights Defenders and their work.
RECOMMENDATIONS
• Enquiry into and suspension of police and administrative officials responsible for grave dereliction of duty.
• Proactive prevention of programmes planned by Hindutva forces that are divisive and propagate hate such as kalash yatra, Shraddhanjali sabhas (memorial meetings) and dharnas by Hindu religious leaders of Orissa held to perform rituals to eliminate the ‘enemies of Hindus.’
• Sections 153 A and B of the Indian Penal Code be strictly enforced.
• National Legal Services Authorities at both State and Central level to set up legal cell to assist victims to register FIRs where they were not registered or inaccurately registered, re-open closed cases, and transfer pending cases to outside the Kandhamal jurisdiction.
• A Special Investigation Team (SIT) be constituted to re-examine the already registered FIRs for accuracy, examine registrations of fresh FIRs, the trials that resulted in acquittals due to intimidation and/or lack of evidence and recommend the trials that need to be transferred or fresh trial conducted outside Kandhamal;
• Proactively identify cases of sexual assault has been grossly underreported due to fear and intimidation; and recognize and charge sexual assault in FIRs where they have not been so recognized.
• Appoint Special Public Prosecutors who enjoy the confidence of the affected community.
• State must provide protection to victims and witnesses before, during and after the trial process according to the guidelines provided in the recent judgment of the Delhi High Court.
• Endorse the recommendations of the National Advisory Council of drafting a new bill on mass crimes against impunity and secure accountability for mass crimes. The draft be in accordance with the emerging international standards of individual criminal accountability for mass crimes as set in the statute of the International Criminal Court and jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals.
• Both the State and Central government adopt at the very minimum the Gujarat compensation package to enhance the compensation already announced. In addition, victims of sexual assault be included as a ground eligible for compensation and employment. , Compensation for loss of livelihood
• All mechanisms set up to improve the criminal justice response, provide reparations, including compensation and rehabilitation be based on human rights indicators and standards that recognises the fact that even after two years thousands continue to be displaced.
• State make all effort to provide medical and psychological, particularly trauma counceling to the victims/ survivors, particularly the women and children.
• The specific educational needs of the children who have suffered displacement as a result of the violence be address with measures such as bridge school under the Sarva siksha Abhiyan, Kasturba Balika Vidhyalaya for SCs and STs girls; and residential ashram schools.
• The livelihood schemes of the state and central government be particularly provided to the affected community including M G Narega and special thrust be given for the affected youth in the PM’s skill training mission.
• The special component plan for the SC and the tribal sub-plan for STs should given priority focus to the schemes directed at the affected community. Dalit Christians to be provided all non-statutory benefits available to schedule castes.
• All training centres both of administrative and police to focus on education and awareness about rights, secularism and constitutional gurantees to minorities.
• Restitution and Rehabilitation to follow the international standards set in paragraphs 16-18 and 25-29 of the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and paragraphs 52 to 68 of the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development based Evictions and Displacement, 2007.
• The State should recognize the Internally Displaced Persons’ right to return to their homes and create all possible enabling conditions to facilitate such safe return in accordance with the above standards.
• Review The Orissa Freedom of Religion Act 1967 given the failure of the state machinery to prevent the violence and protect lives and properties of the people.
• Designate the affected areas as communally sensitive, appoint officers with professional integrity and sensitivity to the overall communal context and be alert to any early warning signs and develop appropriate response mechanisms to halt the brewing of hate mobilization and religious and caste-based discriminative activities.
• Given the fact that human rights violations continue to take place as outlined in this report, the NHRC should take immediate steps to initiate an investigation into the incidences of violence.
• The National Commission on protection of Children Rights should investigate the need for children of the affected community to receive trauma councelling, to respect and promote their right to education and nutrition, take specific steps to prevent child labour and child trafficking. Appropriate agencies at the central and state levels need to respond to these issues.
• All efforts by the central and state government to improve the situation in Kandhamal must comply with the provisions of international human rights instruments that India has signed and ratified including CERD, CAT, CEDAW, CESCR, CRC, , UNPCR, UNDHR.
• Confidence-building and peace-building initiatives by the state and district administration should have the participation of members of the affected community, particularly women.
• The state and district administration should, with immediate effect, implement the recommendations of the National Commission for Minorities, issued in their reports of January, April and September 2008
Justice A.P. Shah Harsh Mander Mahesh Bhatt
Former Chief Justice Member Film maker and activist
Delhi High Court National Advisory Council
P.S.Krishnan Miloon Kothari Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat
Former Secretary, Former UN Special Former Chief of Naval Staff
Government of India Rapporteur on
Right to Housing
Syeeda Hameed Vahida Nainar Sukumar Muralidharan
Member Expert Free lance journalist
Planning Commission International law
Vinod Raina Ruth Manorama Vrinda Grover
Scientist and Social Activists Dalit & women’s rights Advocate
Right to Education Activist
Rabi Das
Senior Journalist
Bhubaneswar
JURY’S PRELIMINARY FINDINGS & RECOMMENDATIONS
24 AUGUST 2010
The National People’s Tribunal (NPT) on Kandhamal, held in New Delhi on 22-24 August 2010, was organized by the National Solidarity Forum - a countrywide solidarity platform of concerned social activists, media persons, researchers, legal experts, film makers, artists, writers, scientists and civil society organizations to assist the victims and survivors of the Kandhamal violence 2008 to seek justice, accountability and peace and to restore the victim-survivors’ right to a dignified life.
The jury of the NPT was headed by Justice A.P. Shah, former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court. Joining him as jury members were Harsh Mander (member of National Advisory Council), Mahesh Bhatt (film maker and activist), Miloon Kothari (former UN Special Rapporteur on Right to Housing), P.S.Krishnan (retired Secretary, Government of India), Rabi Das (senior journalist based in Bhubaneswar), Ruth Manorama (women and dalit rights activist), Sukumar Muralidharan (Delhi-based free lance journalist), Syeeda Hameed (member of Planning Commission, Government of India), Vahida Nainar (expert on international law, mass crimes and gender), Vinod Raina (scientist and social activist with a specific focus on right to education), Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat (former Chief of Naval Staff) and Vrinda Grover (advocate, Delhi High Court).
******
Introduction
Thousands of dalits and tribals belonging to the Christian minorities in the Kandhamal region of Orissa were victims of organized violence starting in August 2007. According to government figures during the last bout of violence from August to December 2008, in Kandhamal district alone more than 600 villages were ransacked, 5600 houses were looted and burnt, 54000 people were left homeless, 38 people were murdered. Human rights groups estimate that over 100 people were killed, including women, disabled and aged persons and children; and an unestimated number suffered severe physical injuries and mental trauma. While there are reports of four women being gang-raped, many more victims of sexual assault are believed to have been intimidated into silence. 295 churches and other places of worship, big and small, were destroyed. 13 schools, colleges, and offices of 5 non-profit organizations damaged. About 30,000 people were uprooted and lived in relief camps and continue to be displaced. During this period about 2,000 people belonging to minority communities were forced to repudiate their Christian faith. More than 10,000 children had their education severely disrupted due to displacement and fear. Today, after two years, the situation has not improved, although the administration time and again claims it is peaceful and has returned to normalcy. With a view to create conditions for justice and accountability for the violence, the National Solidarity Forum organized a National People’s Tribunal (NPT) on 22-24 August 2010 at the Constitution Club in Delhi. The objectives of the Tribunal were:
1. To provide a platform for victim-survivors and their families to voice their experiences, perceptions, demands and aspirations to civil society at large;
2. To study and analyse the long-term and short-term causes and impact of the Kandhamal violence;
3. To assess the role, conduct and responsibility of various organizations, groups of individuals or persons, in influencing, precipitating and escalating the violence;
4. To assess the role played by the state and district administration and public officials, including the police, before, during and after the pogrom;
5. To assess the functioning of the criminal justice system for fixing criminal accountability and prosecuting the guilty;
6. To study and analyse the various rights of victims and survivors that have been violated during the violence and thereafter;
7. To recommend both short-term and long-term remedial measures for promoting an efficient delivery of justice and reparations, and for strengthening peace-building, prevention of communal violence and secularism; and
8. To present the findings and recommendations before civil society, including the media, and to persuade the government and other agencies to pursue the necessary follow up action to restore dignity, right to life, justice and peace to the victim-survivors of Kandhamal violence.
The Tribunal heard 43 victims, survivors and their representatives, and 15 experts who presented studies / fact-finding reports on the Kandhamal violence. Documentation related to each case, consisting of affidavits, court documents, medical and other supporting documents, as well as copies of reports and studies on the violence were placed before the jury for its perusal. The depositions were on a range of issues including a) adivasi and dalit rights to religious and culture freedom; b) role of police, administration and the criminal justice system; c) issues relating to housing, compensation, relief, rehabilitation, food and livelihood, displacement and migration of the victims; d) impact on children and their education; e) gender violence and violations of human rights; and f) role of media, political parties, and civil society in peace and reconciliation processes. Formal invitations were extended to the Ministry of Minority Affairs, Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Ministry of Women’s Development and Child Welfare, Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, as well as the National Human Rights Commission, National Commission for Minorities, National Commission for Scheduled Castes, National Commission for Scheduled Tribes and National Commission for Women to participate in the proceedings of the Tribunal. However, there was no participation from the concerned ministries and commissions.
PREAMBLE
The jury records its shock and deep concern for the heinous and brutal manner in which the members of the Christian community, a vast majority of who are dalits and tribals were killed, dismembered, sexually assaulted and tortured. The deliberate destruction of evidence pertaining to these crimes came to the attention to the jury. There was rampant and systematic looting and destruction of houses and places of worship and means of livelihood. The victim-survivors continue to be intimidated and systematically denied protection and access to justice.
From the testimonies heard and the detailed reports received, the jury is convinced that the carnage in Kandhamal is an act of communalism mainly directed against the Christian community, a vast majority of who are of scheduled caste origin and anyone who supported or worked with the community. It is clear to us that there was deliberate strategy of targeting of the community, fed by groups of the Hindutva ideology such as Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), Bajrang Dal and the active members of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
The jury is further convinced that the communal violence in Kandhamal was the consequence of a subversion of constitutional governance in which state agents were complicit.
The jury acknowledges and appreciates the courage, determination and resilience of the victim-survivors and the human rights defenders supporting them, who have braved physical, psychological and economic hardships and intimidation to tell their stories before this Tribunal, thereby breaking the culture of silence. After listening to the myriad accounts of all the victim-survivors and their representatives, as well as the experts who presented a summary of their studies / fact-finding reports on the Kandhamal violence, the jury offers the following preliminary findings and recommendations:
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
The jury observes that a majority of victim-survivors and their families are from marginalized groups, particularly from the dalit and adivasi (SC and ST) Christian community, and that most live in abject poverty and on the brink of despair. The victim-survivors and their families are yet to obtain justice, rehabilitation or regain a right to life with dignity. The victims/survivors have undergone incredible hardships, including physical and psychological trauma, threats and humiliation, deprivation of a dignity, an extensive loss of movable and immovable property, a source and means of livelihood and their right to a decent standard of living - including food, housing, education and health services. They have faced persecution in all its forms – such as social and economic boycott as well as religious, caste-based and cultural discrimination. They live under a constant threat to their lives and personal security and continue to suffer from trauma. The consequence is that even two year after the outbreak of the violence, the victim-survivors are unable to return to their villages and resume their normal way of life. They continue to be subjected to constant and overt manifestations of communal, caste and class-based discrimination. All victim-survivors and their representatives who deposed before the Tribunal strongly articulated their demand for justice and security.
The jury observes that communal forces have used religious conversions as an issue for political mobilisation and to incite horrific forms of violence and discrimination against the Christians of SC origin and their supporters in Kandhamal. The object is to dominate them and ensure that they never rise above their low caste status and remain subservient to the upper castes. The jury observes, with deep concern, that a range of coercive tactics have been used by the communal forces for conversion or re-conversion of a person into the Hindu fold, including threat, intimidation, social and economic boycott and coercion, as well as the institutionalization of humiliating rituals. The state and district administrations have, on no occasion, intervened to protect the freedom of religion and freedom of expression.
The jury observes, with concern, the institutionalised communal and casteist bias of state agencies, and their deliberate dereliction of constitutionally mandated duties, their connivance with communal forces, participation in and support to the violence and a deliberate scuttling of processes of justice through acts of commission and omission. The state agencies have blatantly failed to extend much-needed institutional support to victim-survivors and protect them from ostracism , socio-economic boycott and subjugation by non-state actors.
SPECIFIC OBSERVATIONS
A. State’s Complicity and Collusion
• Institutional Bias: All testimonies and reports have pointed towards the complicity of the police – senior officers as well as the constabulary – during the phase of violence, and their collusion with the wrongdoers during the phase of investigation and prosecution. Based on the testimonies, the jury concludes that this was not an aberration of a few individual police men, but evidence of an institutional bias against the targeted Christian community.
• Failure to Prevent the Violence: The police deliberately failed to prevent the violence by a) non-implementation of the recommendations made by the National Commission for Minorities in its reports of January and April 2008; b) permitting the funeral procession of Swami Lakshmananda through a 170 kilometre route through communally sensitive areas; c) allowing hate speeches and incitement to violence; d) allowing a series of programmes by the communal forces (such as the bandh of 25 August 2008, shraddhanjali sabhas and dharnas by Hindu religous leaders). In particular, the permission given by the state administration to the funeral procession cannot, in any way, be a mere lapse of judgment. The state agencies displayed long overdue political resolve when they stopped VHP leader Praveen Togadia from visiting Kandhamal in March 2010. This late awakening was however, of little help to the victim-survivors of the district.
• Suspension of Police Officials: Many witnesses deposed about the failure of the police to protect them from the violence and their refusal to register First Information Reports subsequently. There were long delayed actions to check police complicity, when five police officials were suspended for misconduct and negligence in connection with the sexual assault on Sister Meena, and the identification of 13 police officials for failure to protect persons and property in Kandhamal by A.K. Upadhyay, DIG (Training).
• Destruction of Evidence by Public Officials: The jury is constrained to observe that public officials have colluded in the destruction of evidence and there is testimony directly implicating the District Collector in this misdemeanour (Case No. 24)
B. Communal Forces, Freedom of Religion and Discrimination
• Forcible Conversions: Testimonies pointed towards forcible conversion of Christians to Hinduism during the violence and subsequently, as a condition for their return to their villages. No known action has been initiated against any of the perpetrators by the administration under the provisions either of criminal law, or the state’s Freedom of Religion Act.
• Serious Violation of Religious Freedom: The violent intimidation of the Christian community, accompanied by social sanctions against the practice of Christianity, the destruction and desecration of places of worship, the forcible conversions to Hinduism, the killing and torture of victims and survivors for their refusal to repudiate their faith, are all acts violative of the constitutional guarantees of right to life, equality and non-discrimination, as well as the right to religious freedom.
• The Role of Hindutva forces: The accused identified in all witness testimonies were members of Hindutva organisations. This is substantiated by the response of Orissa Chief Minister, to a query raised in the state Legislative Assembly, on 23 November 2009. In his written response, Mr. Naveen Patnaik said that pursuant to investigation, 85 members of the RSS, 321 members of the VHP and 118 members of the Bajrang Dal had been arrested.
• Discrimination on the Basis of Caste and Religion: The targeted violence against dalit Christians, as well as the continued discrimination against them are violative of Constitutional guarantees of equality, non-discrimination, right to a dignified life and the prohibition of untouchability. Further, they amount to a serious violation of all provisions of the UN Convention on Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD), a convention ratified by India. The Concluding Observations of its forty-ninth session held in August/September 1996 (as it reviewed India's tenth to fourteenth periodic reports under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination, 1965), the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination affirmed that "the situation of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes falls within the scope of" the Convention. The Committee states that "descent" contained in Article 1 of the Convention does not refer solely to race, and includes the situation of scheduled castes and tribes.
C. Sexual Violence and Other Gender Concerns
• Silence and Invisibility: The jury observes, with deep concern, that silence continues to prevail in matters of sexual assault. This applies at all levels, including documenting, reporting, investigating, charging and prosecuting cases. Though witness testimonies show that sexual violence was rampant, there are only five reported cases, and an even smaller number that have been registered and are pending in the courts. One of the testimonies refers to the gang rape (Case No. 3), but none of the accused has been formally charged.
• Special Vulnerability of Women: While all victims and survivors face intimidation and threats, women face the additional danger of sexual violence not just against themselves but also against their daughters (Case No. 12). The immediate consequence of such threats is a hightened sense of vulnerability and a restriction on their movement. The jury observes that the threat of sexual assault against women continues to be used as a tool to prevent families from returning to their villages, to prevent women from resuming their livelihood activities, and pursuing justice.
• Violation of international covenants: The pattern of violence against women is violative of constitutional guarantees of equality, non-discrimination on the ground of sex as well as a right to life with dignity. In addition, the attacks violate international standards, including the UN Convention on Elimination of Violence Against Women (CEDAW) which has been ratified by India. The CEDAW Committee, through General Recommendation 19, has clarified that gender-based violence, that is, violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately, amounts to discrimination against women.
D. Failure of the Criminal Justice System
• Arbitrary Exercise of Discretionary Power: The jury observes, with concern, an arbitrary exercise of the discretionary power vested in the police and the prosecuting agencies. In many instances, the police have refused to register FIRs, have delayed registering FIRs by 2-5 months, and dissuaded victim-survivors from registering FIRs and coerced them to omit the names of perpetrators and other details from the FIRs, particularly if they indicated the complicity of public officials or members of communal organizations. Victim-survivors were also shunted between various police stations for registration of FIRs in contexts where their safety was at risk.
• Arrests: Many victim-survivors deposed before the jury that the perpetrators of heinous crimes had not been arrested, and were roaming freely and continuing to threaten, intimidate and humiliate them. Testimonies point to an inordinate delay in arresting the perpetrators, and a failure to arrest many more, contributing to an overall climate of impunity. Honest police officials who attempted to arrest perpetrators were threatened. Testimonies indicate that victim-survivors were often threatened with arrest under fabricated charges in order to silence them and deter them from pursuing justice.
• Investigation & Prosecution: The deliberate destruction of evidence, particularly of killings, through the burning or disposal of bodies, has resulted in the absence of forensic evidence in many cases. Investigations were marked by a neglect of the basic requirements of gathering evidence, which severely impaired the efficacy of the prosecution. Delay in obtaining forensic evidence, failure in obtaining corroborative evidence and the rampant intimidation of victim-survivors and witnesses, have led to many acquittals.
• Appreciation of Evidence by the Fast Track Courts: Upon perusal of judgments, affidavits and statements, the jury concludes that the judicial weighing of evidence failed to recognise the extraordinary context in which these mass crimes have been committed. Minor discrepancies in witness testimonies in court have been given undue weightage, leading to an alarmingly high number of acquittals.
• Judgment and Sentencing: Studies indicate that lenient sentences have been awarded without an acknowledgment of the gravity of the crimes committed and their consequences, both in terms of heinous killings and assault, as well as rampant looting of movable property and destruction of immovable property belonging to the dalit and adivasi Christians. A fine of Rs. 2000 has been mechanically imposed, without any correlation with the value of property destroyed. Further there seems to have been little attempt to apply S. 357 of the Cr.PC which provides for an imposition of a higher amount of fine, which could be recovered and paid to victim-survivors as compensation.
• Gaps in Indian Criminal Law: The jury observes that clear gaps exist in the criminal law to prosecute and punish those responsible for targeted mass violence. These include the absence of investigative procedures and evidentiary rules relating to mass crimes, such as punishing for murder even in the absence of the body of deceased. The protections guaranteed by law to public servants obstruct their accountability. Such gaps make dispensation of justice in contexts of mass violence extremely difficult.
• Relevance of International Criminal Law: The testimonies shows that the Kandhamal violence meets all the elements of Crimes Against Humanity as defined in applicable international law. The jury has come across cases where victims were dismembered or burnt alive, constituting the crime of torture under jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals. (The International Criminal Court’s definition of torture in Article 7 does not require that torture be committed by public officials.) That a victim was forced to drink cow urine and shave his head amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
E. Protection of Victims and Witnesses, Access to Justice & Fair Trial
• Willingness to Testify in Court: Those who deposed before the Tribunal were keen, ready and willing to depose before the Fast Track courts. However, they face severe intimidation and threats. Despite the concerned authorities being informed, no steps have been taken to provide any protection to the witnesses and victim-survivors.
• Hostile Atmosphere in Court: The atmosphere in the trial court (Fast Track courts) was described as hostile. The atmosphere was fearful as the accused were accompanied by a large number of persons representing the accused, and from communal forces. The atmosphere in court is not conducive to a fair trial. There has been no initiative taken, either by the Prosecutor or the court, to hold the proceedings in camera.
• Absence of Safe Passage: Victims who have dared to lodge complaints & witnesses who have courageously given evidence in court are unable to return to their homes. There is no guarantee of safe passage to and from the courts. They are living in other cities and villages, many of them in hiding, as they apprehend danger to their lives.
• Threat of Sexual Assault: Women victims and witnesses have received constant threats of sexual violence and rape to themselves and their daughters. Ironically most of the accused roam freely and live in their villages and homes.
• Absence of Free Legal Aid: Since most of the victim-survivors are from underprivileged communities, there is a dire need for quality legal aid services at state expenses. None of those who deposed before us had been extended free legal aid services. Most victim-survivors have been supported in court through the initiatives of non-profit organizations. The failure of the state to provide free legal aid has contributed substantially to an absence of fair trial.
F. Concerns Related to Children
The most important finding related to children status in Kandahamal is sense of hopelessness, injustice discrimination and fear prevailing among children, threatening to severely impact their growth and development.
• Mental Health: Children are in deep state of mental trauma. There has been no trauma counselling for the affected children and adolescents in Kandhamal. Even today they have night mares of running in the jungle, with the killers in pursuit, are scared of any loud sound and are afraid of people walking in groups or talking loudly.
• Education: Large number of children has dropped out of school due to financial and social insecurity and many have them have gone out for work. Many of them had to discontinue their education due to discrimination meted out to them by the school authority and also in some cases by children in schools. Many children were forced to change school and many of them opted for residential schools out of the state. Post violence many dropped out due to the inability of the families to bear the expenses, fear, and also due to lack of facilities to commute to school.
• Child Labour: Many children have left education and have gone to Kerala, Surat and neighbouring states. Even girls have gone to Udhagamandalam (Ooty)and working in coffee plantation. there is no data available with the district Labour Office regarding the present status of child labour in the state. Last child labour census in the district was done in 1997.
• Child Trafficking: There are rise incidences of trafficking for children, mainly for labour, sexual exploitation and abuse. Though there are no consolidated data on number of children being trafficked post violence in the district, we have come across some instances.
G. Reparations
• Compensation: Compensation for loss of life, injuries and loss of / damage to property has been awarded in an extremely arbitrary manner. The amounts awarded are grossly inadequate and do permit victim-survivors to regain the standards of living enjoyed prior to the violence. The award of compensation does not recognize sexual assault or the extent of loss of house and movable property destruction, the exclusion of which has caused immense difficulties to victim-survivors and their families.
• Relief and Humanitarian Assistance: From the testimonies of victim-survivors and reports, it is evident that the relief camps did not provide for basic facilities such as nutritious food, clean water and sanitation, or adequate security. There was a lack of trauma counselling, medical assistance and other forms of humanitarian assistance that ought to have been made available to all victim-survivors in the relief camps.
• Safe Return or Resettlement: Many victim-survivors have been forced or duped into returning to their villages, where they have faced continuous threat, intimidation and fear of attacks if they did not repudiate their faith. Many victim-survivors and their families continue to live on the outskirts of their villages, without any source of livelihood. The state and district authorities have taken no proactive measures at creating an atmosphere conducive for the safe return of victim-survivors to their villages. By failing to recognize the right of all victim-survivors and their families to a safe return to their villages or resettlement at state expense, the state has grossly violated the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement 1998.
• Reconstruction of Houses and Places of Worship: Some victim-survivors have been provided inadequate compensation for rebuilding their houses and many excluded from an award of compensation altogether. A majority of places of religious worship that had been damaged or destroyed during the violence, have not been re-built. The amounts awarded as compensation to some are grossly inadequate for re-building such structures, while many others have been denied compensation altogether on technical grounds. The jury strongly believes that reconstruction of houses and places of worship at state expense would restore a sense of confidence and justice among the victim-survivors and their families, and restore them to a life with dignity.
• Livelihood and Education: Many educational institutions that had been damaged or destroyed during the violence are yet to be rebuilt, thereby depriving children from victim-survivor communities of their right to education, jeopardizing their future opportunities and causing a generational setback for emerging deprived dalit communities. Many victim-survivors who lost their source of livelihood, including agricultural land and government jobs, due to the mass displacement that took place, have received no assistance from the state for a restoration of the same. Many testimonies presented before the jury highlighted the fact that victim-survivors have been illegally deprived of employment under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act subsequent to the violence.
• Peace-building: Although village level peace committees had been set up, the testimonies before the jury as well as studies and reports indicate that such committees have not enjoyed the confidence of the victim-survivors and have been used as a platform for further intimidation. Notably, there has been no involvement of women in peace-building and negotiating processes, which violates standards set by international law, particularly UN Security Council Resolution 1325.
H. Human Rights Defenders
Non-profit organizations and human rights defenders have been targeted for their role in assisting victims with aid, relief, rehabilitation and process of justice. Victim-survivors have testified with regard to the destruction of personal and official property, attacks and damage to the offices of such organizations. These are contrary to the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights Defenders that calls upon the State to protect Human Rights Defenders and their work.
RECOMMENDATIONS
• Enquiry into and suspension of police and administrative officials responsible for grave dereliction of duty.
• Proactive prevention of programmes planned by Hindutva forces that are divisive and propagate hate such as kalash yatra, Shraddhanjali sabhas (memorial meetings) and dharnas by Hindu religious leaders of Orissa held to perform rituals to eliminate the ‘enemies of Hindus.’
• Sections 153 A and B of the Indian Penal Code be strictly enforced.
• National Legal Services Authorities at both State and Central level to set up legal cell to assist victims to register FIRs where they were not registered or inaccurately registered, re-open closed cases, and transfer pending cases to outside the Kandhamal jurisdiction.
• A Special Investigation Team (SIT) be constituted to re-examine the already registered FIRs for accuracy, examine registrations of fresh FIRs, the trials that resulted in acquittals due to intimidation and/or lack of evidence and recommend the trials that need to be transferred or fresh trial conducted outside Kandhamal;
• Proactively identify cases of sexual assault has been grossly underreported due to fear and intimidation; and recognize and charge sexual assault in FIRs where they have not been so recognized.
• Appoint Special Public Prosecutors who enjoy the confidence of the affected community.
• State must provide protection to victims and witnesses before, during and after the trial process according to the guidelines provided in the recent judgment of the Delhi High Court.
• Endorse the recommendations of the National Advisory Council of drafting a new bill on mass crimes against impunity and secure accountability for mass crimes. The draft be in accordance with the emerging international standards of individual criminal accountability for mass crimes as set in the statute of the International Criminal Court and jurisprudence of international courts and tribunals.
• Both the State and Central government adopt at the very minimum the Gujarat compensation package to enhance the compensation already announced. In addition, victims of sexual assault be included as a ground eligible for compensation and employment. , Compensation for loss of livelihood
• All mechanisms set up to improve the criminal justice response, provide reparations, including compensation and rehabilitation be based on human rights indicators and standards that recognises the fact that even after two years thousands continue to be displaced.
• State make all effort to provide medical and psychological, particularly trauma counceling to the victims/ survivors, particularly the women and children.
• The specific educational needs of the children who have suffered displacement as a result of the violence be address with measures such as bridge school under the Sarva siksha Abhiyan, Kasturba Balika Vidhyalaya for SCs and STs girls; and residential ashram schools.
• The livelihood schemes of the state and central government be particularly provided to the affected community including M G Narega and special thrust be given for the affected youth in the PM’s skill training mission.
• The special component plan for the SC and the tribal sub-plan for STs should given priority focus to the schemes directed at the affected community. Dalit Christians to be provided all non-statutory benefits available to schedule castes.
• All training centres both of administrative and police to focus on education and awareness about rights, secularism and constitutional gurantees to minorities.
• Restitution and Rehabilitation to follow the international standards set in paragraphs 16-18 and 25-29 of the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement and paragraphs 52 to 68 of the UN Basic Principles and Guidelines on Development based Evictions and Displacement, 2007.
• The State should recognize the Internally Displaced Persons’ right to return to their homes and create all possible enabling conditions to facilitate such safe return in accordance with the above standards.
• Review The Orissa Freedom of Religion Act 1967 given the failure of the state machinery to prevent the violence and protect lives and properties of the people.
• Designate the affected areas as communally sensitive, appoint officers with professional integrity and sensitivity to the overall communal context and be alert to any early warning signs and develop appropriate response mechanisms to halt the brewing of hate mobilization and religious and caste-based discriminative activities.
• Given the fact that human rights violations continue to take place as outlined in this report, the NHRC should take immediate steps to initiate an investigation into the incidences of violence.
• The National Commission on protection of Children Rights should investigate the need for children of the affected community to receive trauma councelling, to respect and promote their right to education and nutrition, take specific steps to prevent child labour and child trafficking. Appropriate agencies at the central and state levels need to respond to these issues.
• All efforts by the central and state government to improve the situation in Kandhamal must comply with the provisions of international human rights instruments that India has signed and ratified including CERD, CAT, CEDAW, CESCR, CRC, , UNPCR, UNDHR.
• Confidence-building and peace-building initiatives by the state and district administration should have the participation of members of the affected community, particularly women.
• The state and district administration should, with immediate effect, implement the recommendations of the National Commission for Minorities, issued in their reports of January, April and September 2008
Justice A.P. Shah Harsh Mander Mahesh Bhatt
Former Chief Justice Member Film maker and activist
Delhi High Court National Advisory Council
P.S.Krishnan Miloon Kothari Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat
Former Secretary, Former UN Special Former Chief of Naval Staff
Government of India Rapporteur on
Right to Housing
Syeeda Hameed Vahida Nainar Sukumar Muralidharan
Member Expert Free lance journalist
Planning Commission International law
Vinod Raina Ruth Manorama Vrinda Grover
Scientist and Social Activists Dalit & women’s rights Advocate
Right to Education Activist
Rabi Das
Senior Journalist
Bhubaneswar
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Kandhamal two years after the anti Christian violece
A Report to the Nation on the Second Anniversary of the Pogrom
By John Dayal
This should scare any parent – in fact any sensitive person – out of his or her complacency. Manorama Mohapatra, a District Social Welfare officer in Orissa, has reported two cases of incidents of trafficking of girl children in the Kandhamal district recently. Many other girls have been rescued from other parts of India, most notably from Hyderabad and other cities in Andhra Pradesh, which adjoins Orissa and has had age old trading ties and human migration between the two regions.]
But before I continue with the story of these two lucky girls, lucky for having been rescued, this is a capsule of the aftermath Kandhamal episode in Indian history. This is what we hope to bring before a National People’s Tribunal which will sit in Delhi from 22 to 14th August 2000 and listen to 50 victim-superiors of Kandhamal. Experts will explain the results of half a dozen research studies that have been carried out in Kandhamal in recent months – ranging from Gender violence to the psychological impact of the violence on little children. The Tribunal jury comprised of former Chief Justices of the Delhi High Court, Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajindar Sachchar. The expert panel includes film maker Mahesh Bhatt, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, National Advisory Council members Harsh Mander and MP Ram Dayal Munda, eminent jurist Vrinda Grover, journalist Seema Mustafa and others.
In case India has forgotten, and sometimes I fear that the people have indeed ceased to remember, Kandhamal district saw two rounds of vicious anti Christian violence in December 2007 and then in August-December 2008. Over 400 villages were purged of their Christian population, with close to 6,000 houses destroyed in mass arson and loot. As many as 295 Church buildings, big and small were destroyed, apart from dozens of Christian social centres and technical training institutions. Perhaps as many as 110 persons were brutally murdered, and we will never know the real figure because the government does not want to record and acknowledge the death of people who were injured and then crawled into the forests and succumbed days alter. And others, including newborns, who died for want of medical attention. Among the dead were women, disabled people, children, Adivasi Kondhs and Dalit Panos. Three women were gang raped and many others molested in what is politely called gender violence.
For the 54,000 persons - which is over 10,000 families -- it will take years more before they can say they have fully recovered from the trauma of the pogrom and one of India’s largest internal displacement after Gujarat 2002 not connected with large dams or natural disasters such as the Tsunami. One third of them still cannot return to their villages for they have been plainly told they will have to become Hindus before they can come. They are destined to live in ghettos or in urban slums. A few who dared were forcibly made Hindus in a simple process in which their hair was shorn and they were made to drink a mixture of cow urine and dung. This I have it from the brother of a victim. The boy suffered in silence, but the next day, ran away and is now once again a practising Christian, though not yet able to live in his own house.
The violence had also impacted on 13 other districts of Kandhamal, and saw copy cat incidents in other states, notably Karnataka, but also in Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhatisgarh and so on. The violence died out when there was nothing more left to burn. Neither the Centre, nor the Sate authorities can really lay claim that it was their initiative or their work that brought the fires and the killings under control.
And in a travesty of justice and retribution, the chief officer still rules his fiefdom, the District collector who failed to act when the body of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Lakshmanananda Saraswati, was paraded by VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders for over 270 kilometres touching most villages in the sparsely populated Kandhamal. His response then was that any action would have enraged the mobs further. Policemen, many of whom had often drunk of the “holy water” in which the man used to wash his feet during the many dishpans in his 40 year unlawful reign in the forested district, were of course not even expected to act, and remained silent and distant spectators. Most remain in their posts. Not one has been punished for dereliction of duty. The collector has apparently even been given awards by some institutes which have forgotten that had to be admonished by no less than the Supreme Court of India before he would allow humanitarian aid from Christian relief agencies to be distributed in the camps the government had set up in then wake of the violence. His reasons for denying them permission: he feared they would assist only Christian victims and would therefore exacerbate the situation, forgetting the role these very agencies had played in assisting a paralysed Stet government during the Super-cyclones and floods of past years!
The Centre, ruled by the United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress, and the State, ruled by the autocratic Naveen Pattnaik and his Biju Janata Dal – continue to quarrel over the issue. The centre said it had sent adequate forces, the chief minister said they were mere trainees. But neither Centre nor State have had the charity to look at the condition of the victims. The centre – which had been repeatedly, and in vain, been approached by the top leadership of the Christian community -- vacillated. The then Union Home Minister and now Punjab Governor, Shivraj Patil, proved his arrogance and thorough incompetence by dithering and not been able to make up his mind if the Centre could really invoke Constitutional provisions to force Pattnaik to act. Even the President of India, approached by us, could do little other than formally asking for a report. There is little Indian Presidents, who are constitutional heads, can do unless the Prime Minister and the Union Cabinet present them the relevant papers to sign.
It is this governmental paralysis that is so visible in all facets of the Kandhamal operations – relief, justice, human rehabilitation.
The Church led the initial relief. But the government stood exposed in the quality of camps it ran. Even had nosed New Delhi bureaucrats were shocked at the conditions of life, and for the few foreign delegations that could see camp life, it as worse than conditions in deep Africa, or in prisoners of war camps. More than hunger and disease, it was the indignity that human beings were subjected to, cramped under the tarpaulin, shorn of all privacy. Young girls, women and married couples suffered the worst. Unmarried girls will carry the shame and the trauma to their graves.
Form union revenue secretary K. R. Venugopal, IAS, wrote to the Orissa government: “There can never be any dignity if people practising a particular religion – here Christianity – are told that they can return to their homes only as Hindus. Such threats are unconstitutional and the State has a duty to intervene proactively to put a stop to that and guarantee peaceful residence to the citizens with a right to their religious conviction. All these involve the relevant fundamental rights guaranteed to citizens under Part III of our Constitution as in articles 19, 21 and 25, not to mention the articles that guarantee the right to equality before law and equal protection of the laws and the right not to be discriminated on any account.”
He went on to record the “the impossible conditions seen in the camps visited by us in G. Udayagri and Mandasur. The unacceptable numbers of people living in each of these camps and in each tent in these camps render their lives miserable in the extreme and inhuman. In one tent where I spent an hour at G. Udayagiri speaking to the inmates there were 48 persons of whom several were women. Its dimensions were about 25x15 feet. There was hardly space for any one to move or stretch, what to speak of privacy for women to change? Those women live in the full view of the male inmates, including their own brothers on the one hand and strangers on the other. Their sanitary requirements at a personal level, including of women who have not attained menopause have not been factored in by those who designed or are running these camps. If the official argument is that these women would not know how to use sanitary napkins or pads even if supplied, then they should be provided with whatever they are accustomed to, in consultation with them. It is deplorable that this has not been done. Outside these tents, there are less than 10 toilets for the thousands living in the camp with hardly 5 of them in usable condition.”
Two years on the conditions of the victims of Kandhamal remains in dire straits - homeless, jobless and bereft of any justice from the Pattnaik regime. Fr Ajay Singh, who is a senior activist and involved both in all three aspects of the Kandhamal struggle, says “the fact that the majority of the population of Kandhamal are Adivasis and dalits has only aggravated the criminal negligence of the administration.” Out of 3,300 complaints filed by the victims in the local police stations, only 831 have been registered as FIRs. Majority of the registered cases have not been investigated. The communal bias of the state administration has meant criminals have been acquitted one by one. Now the National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over 55 organisations from different parts of the country has been formed to take up the cause of justice for the victims of the Kandhamal pogrom.
I have seen how the legal system works in Kandhamal. The two fast track courts set up in a government building in Phulbani, the district capital, are examples of just how justice systems ought not to be conducted. The courtyards of the courts are filled with RSS activists, and witnesses who come are threatened almost within hearing distance of the judges. The two policemen at the court can merely look on. Inside, with the victims getting no independent legal help, they remain at the mercy of two hard pressed and entirely enlightened Public Prosecutors. Their own probity could be questioned if there were competent prosecution lawyers assisting the witnesses in cross examinations and speaking on behalf of the victims. The results are inevitable. There is small punishment in minor cases, but the major cases of murder see the killers go scot free. In the case of the gang rape of the Nun, it took the Christian defence lawyers months before they could win in the High court to get the case transferred from Kandhamal to Cuttack, which is the seat of the High Court of Orissa. But even here, the proceedings do not see the public prosecutors and police actually assisting the cause of justice.
We await the judgment which may take some time. Of the rest, the statistical summary explains the miscarriage of justice in the district.
--------- -
Complaints lodged after of 2008 3232
Cases Registered (FIRs) 831
No of Case were commuted to the fast tract courts 193
No. Cases under trial 95
No. Cases disposed (Filed as Closed) 91
No. Persons Convicted 176
Life imprisonment Sentence 5
Persons Acquitted 653
Persons arrested so far 794
----------- -
Noted jurist Vrinda Grover in her report “The Law must Change Its Course” has graphically analysed the judicial system and cautioned that the parody of the legal process will have far reaching implications. She and others have also demanded that the crime registration to investigation by special teams, and the trial process now follow the rigours procedures that have been set in motion in Gujarat after repeated interventions by the Supreme Court of India.
This brings me back to the case of the trafficked women. Archbishop Raphael Cheenath has referred the human trafficking as a major criminal and moral threat to the innocent of the Tribal and Dalit people. The most recent case came from the Tikably block, where a girl was lured away by a boy on the promise of marriage and was finally rescued from Jharkhand. In another case, four girls from the Daringbadi block were trafficked to Delhi to work as domestic labour. There were worse cases. In Gumamaha panchayat, 15 girls were rescued from Bhubaneswar railway station, from a person who called himself a supervisor of the noted company L&T. Another two girls, who were studying in class 7, were taken to Noida near Delhi and sexually abused and forced into prostitution. They managed to escape after two months and finally sent back home by an NGO. Activists say such incidents, disclosed to the investigating teams during interactions, are still the tip of the iceberg. According to some NGO activists, there are organised racketeers who are working the district now. Some local people of the district generally act as middlemen and lure the family members by job offers.
Displacement induced migration too has increased after the violence. According to Mr Kumar Raman Das, District Labour Officer, Child Labour, post-violence, families are migrating to other districts and states for work, making migrant labour of children. In Baliguda sub-division (nine blocks), many have migrated to states such as Kerala where wages are high and they are earning Rs 250 per day. Although he maintained that migration by women was not yet high, except in Daringbadi Block, he added that many girls were moving willingly to cities such as Delhi to work as domestic labour.
Most importantly, he said, while migration for work has always been present, and the state administration in Kerala and other places had been supportive so far, post-riots, there has been a sharp spurt in the number that wants to move out, which has made even the state wary and the local police uncooperative. Last year the Kerala government forced 49 migrant labourers from Kandhamal to return, while the Sub-Collector has rescued 73 migrant workers from other states. Children become the worst victim of such circumstances, tossed around and dumped like baggage, without any concern of their present or future.
Kandhamal is used to poverty and hard living. The Orissa Human Development Report, 2005 published by United Nations Development Programme in collaboration with the Federal and Orissa government records, “In 1983, the population live under the Below Poverty Line in Kandhamal district is 74 %; whereas in the same period the coastal Orissa was 67 %. In 2001, the coastal Orissa recorded a reduced percentage of people living under Below Poverty Line to 36 %; while in the same period, Kandhamal district records upward swing of people living under Below Poverty Line up to 75%.” Kandhamal is the second least developed on overall human development index while it is least on health index of Orissa. Tribal and Dalit populations living Below Poverty Line levels is as high as 92% and 87% respectively.
There seems a dim chance of the people rising above the poverty line anytime soon, because there are just no jobs, and the exiting employment schemes, reeking of corruption, seem not to reach the actual victims. Neither government nor Church seems to have come to grips with the problem. An earlier attempt to provide means of self employment to the people has been all but abandoned – businesses that were restored after the 2007 violence were once again destroyed within eight months, and that makes people afraid to invest.
Kandhamal is also used to disease and sickness. Access to health care remains critical. Even in normal times Kandhamal is endemic in malaria, brain fever with the major annual death tolls. The district records one of the highest Infant Mortality Rate and overall index in the country. The violence aftermath has only added to the woes. It is difficult to reach Medicare to the refugees. The district hospital and other block hospitals are ill-equipped to meet serious medical emergencies. The forest areas and the physical insecurity make transportation of critical ill difficult.
The matter of physical rehabilitation and housing has exposed the real abdication of duty by the state government and its officials in the district headquarters. Without any reference to national standards of rehabilitation of communal violence victims, the state fixed arbitrary rates of Rs 50,000 for fully destroyed houses, and Rs 30 to 30 thousand for homes described as partially destroyed, a convenient definition that has kept most uninhabitable houses deserving only of a lower compensation. The churches’ eagerness to be seen acting somewhere has seen them come and try to help the people complete some of the houses. But after having seen the ground situation, my fears are that not even two thirds of the house will be completed this way, unless the church at large can use the full might of the Supreme court and force the government on build the houses from scratch, and build them to human standards. There are issues of land for those whose land ownership is now being questioned because they are Dalits, and this issue also needs to be redressed. The government is not able to build a single house to completion because its support of Rs 50,000 for fully and Rs 20,000 for partial damaged houses, is barely sufficient for mere walls; leaving the house shell without roofs. Even those houses which escaped destruction, were looted, and there is no provision to help people rebuild their lives.
But I feel the real concern is about the children of Kandhamal. I accompanied various European Union teams to Kandhamal, official and unofficial, and I was struck that both men and women in the tams thought of the plight and psychological status, the hiatus in education, and the lack of expert counselling as ;possibly the most major issues in the ravaged district. Over 12000 had their studies discontinued, or severely interrupted. Children in the higher classes – the hopes of a better life for the future – were the worst affected as they did not study almost a full academic year. For the girls, who are due to sit for boards’ examination for 10th and 12th class, this really meant an end to their education, and an end to their dreams and ambitions of a better life. The trauma remains a nightmare, and it may take years before they are healed, if ever.
For me, this is the final tragedy of Kandhamal. An entire generation has been seared by the violence born out of hate and intolerance projected by a specific fascist ideology, fuelled by political and religious competiveness, the fanaticism of one man now dead, murdered by the Maoists in his own home. The tragedy has been compounded by the incompetence of the administration, the utter lack of a sense of responsibility by the bureaucracy and police. The human tragedy seems not matter to Chief minister Naveen Pattnaik, and even his political rivals, the Congress. That is the final tragedy. For Orissa and its ruling elite, Kandhamal does not exist, much less matter. It is the invisible wound, the hidden tumour, which may fester and injure thousands of poor, but does not politically hurt the rulers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
With main Kandhamal Report
The National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over 55 organisations from different parts of the country, which was formed this summer to take up the cause of justice for the victims of the Kandhamal pogrom held an Exhibition at Constitution Club on 22nd April depicting the carnage through drawings, paintings, photographs and semi destroyed artefacts from the burnt down Churches of the district. The exhibition, inaugurated by noted poet and Member of Parliament Javed Akhtar preceded a National People’s Tribunal. The Tribunal jury comprised of former Chief Justices of the Delhi High Court, Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajindar Sachchar. The expert panel includes film maker Mahesh Bhatt, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, National Advisory Council members Harsh Mander and MP Ram Dayal Munda, eminent jurist Vrinda Grover, journalist Seema Mustafa and others. The finale was a National Protest Day on 25th August 20101 in Delhi – and also in Bangalore and Mumbai – entitled “No More Kandhamal’. A list of demands has been presented to the Central and State governments by the National Solidarity Forum at the Protest march.
DEMANDS:
The National Solidarity Forum demands:
1. Immediate prosecution of the police officials who failed to register FIRs and who have allowed criminals to escape justice;
2. Prosecution of policemen who supported the communal violence in Kandhamal;
3. Prosecution of all those who are responsible for forcible conversions to Hinduism;
4. Transfer investigation of the Kandhamal violence to the Central Bureau of Investigation or SIT;
5. Full compensation for the over 5,600 houses destroyed in mass arson;
6. Compensation for victims of gender violence;
7. Compensation for loss of livelihood for two years;
8. Full compensation to all next of kin of those who died in the riots;
9. Resettlement of victims with provision of security in their villages;
10. Employment for men and women victims;
11. Trauma counselling for children, women and men;
12. Assistance for children, especially girls who cannot continue their education as their school certificates have been burnt;
13. Assistance for a large number of survivors whose documents of land and property were destroyed;
14. Implementation of a basic witness protection scheme and provision of assistance and remuneration to victims in order to ensure their testimony in court;
15. Repeal of the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967, which fuels prejudice towards religious minorities;
16. Establishment of a State Commission for Minorities, on the model of the national Commission for Minorities;
17. Prosecution of District, state and administrative officials for their dereliction of duty during violence and rehabilitation
[This article has also been published in the Indian Currents, New Delhi in its edition dated 22 August 2010]
By John Dayal
This should scare any parent – in fact any sensitive person – out of his or her complacency. Manorama Mohapatra, a District Social Welfare officer in Orissa, has reported two cases of incidents of trafficking of girl children in the Kandhamal district recently. Many other girls have been rescued from other parts of India, most notably from Hyderabad and other cities in Andhra Pradesh, which adjoins Orissa and has had age old trading ties and human migration between the two regions.]
But before I continue with the story of these two lucky girls, lucky for having been rescued, this is a capsule of the aftermath Kandhamal episode in Indian history. This is what we hope to bring before a National People’s Tribunal which will sit in Delhi from 22 to 14th August 2000 and listen to 50 victim-superiors of Kandhamal. Experts will explain the results of half a dozen research studies that have been carried out in Kandhamal in recent months – ranging from Gender violence to the psychological impact of the violence on little children. The Tribunal jury comprised of former Chief Justices of the Delhi High Court, Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajindar Sachchar. The expert panel includes film maker Mahesh Bhatt, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, National Advisory Council members Harsh Mander and MP Ram Dayal Munda, eminent jurist Vrinda Grover, journalist Seema Mustafa and others.
In case India has forgotten, and sometimes I fear that the people have indeed ceased to remember, Kandhamal district saw two rounds of vicious anti Christian violence in December 2007 and then in August-December 2008. Over 400 villages were purged of their Christian population, with close to 6,000 houses destroyed in mass arson and loot. As many as 295 Church buildings, big and small were destroyed, apart from dozens of Christian social centres and technical training institutions. Perhaps as many as 110 persons were brutally murdered, and we will never know the real figure because the government does not want to record and acknowledge the death of people who were injured and then crawled into the forests and succumbed days alter. And others, including newborns, who died for want of medical attention. Among the dead were women, disabled people, children, Adivasi Kondhs and Dalit Panos. Three women were gang raped and many others molested in what is politely called gender violence.
For the 54,000 persons - which is over 10,000 families -- it will take years more before they can say they have fully recovered from the trauma of the pogrom and one of India’s largest internal displacement after Gujarat 2002 not connected with large dams or natural disasters such as the Tsunami. One third of them still cannot return to their villages for they have been plainly told they will have to become Hindus before they can come. They are destined to live in ghettos or in urban slums. A few who dared were forcibly made Hindus in a simple process in which their hair was shorn and they were made to drink a mixture of cow urine and dung. This I have it from the brother of a victim. The boy suffered in silence, but the next day, ran away and is now once again a practising Christian, though not yet able to live in his own house.
The violence had also impacted on 13 other districts of Kandhamal, and saw copy cat incidents in other states, notably Karnataka, but also in Tamil Nadu, Andhra, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Chhatisgarh and so on. The violence died out when there was nothing more left to burn. Neither the Centre, nor the Sate authorities can really lay claim that it was their initiative or their work that brought the fires and the killings under control.
And in a travesty of justice and retribution, the chief officer still rules his fiefdom, the District collector who failed to act when the body of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Lakshmanananda Saraswati, was paraded by VHP and Bajrang Dal leaders for over 270 kilometres touching most villages in the sparsely populated Kandhamal. His response then was that any action would have enraged the mobs further. Policemen, many of whom had often drunk of the “holy water” in which the man used to wash his feet during the many dishpans in his 40 year unlawful reign in the forested district, were of course not even expected to act, and remained silent and distant spectators. Most remain in their posts. Not one has been punished for dereliction of duty. The collector has apparently even been given awards by some institutes which have forgotten that had to be admonished by no less than the Supreme Court of India before he would allow humanitarian aid from Christian relief agencies to be distributed in the camps the government had set up in then wake of the violence. His reasons for denying them permission: he feared they would assist only Christian victims and would therefore exacerbate the situation, forgetting the role these very agencies had played in assisting a paralysed Stet government during the Super-cyclones and floods of past years!
The Centre, ruled by the United Progressive Alliance led by the Congress, and the State, ruled by the autocratic Naveen Pattnaik and his Biju Janata Dal – continue to quarrel over the issue. The centre said it had sent adequate forces, the chief minister said they were mere trainees. But neither Centre nor State have had the charity to look at the condition of the victims. The centre – which had been repeatedly, and in vain, been approached by the top leadership of the Christian community -- vacillated. The then Union Home Minister and now Punjab Governor, Shivraj Patil, proved his arrogance and thorough incompetence by dithering and not been able to make up his mind if the Centre could really invoke Constitutional provisions to force Pattnaik to act. Even the President of India, approached by us, could do little other than formally asking for a report. There is little Indian Presidents, who are constitutional heads, can do unless the Prime Minister and the Union Cabinet present them the relevant papers to sign.
It is this governmental paralysis that is so visible in all facets of the Kandhamal operations – relief, justice, human rehabilitation.
The Church led the initial relief. But the government stood exposed in the quality of camps it ran. Even had nosed New Delhi bureaucrats were shocked at the conditions of life, and for the few foreign delegations that could see camp life, it as worse than conditions in deep Africa, or in prisoners of war camps. More than hunger and disease, it was the indignity that human beings were subjected to, cramped under the tarpaulin, shorn of all privacy. Young girls, women and married couples suffered the worst. Unmarried girls will carry the shame and the trauma to their graves.
Form union revenue secretary K. R. Venugopal, IAS, wrote to the Orissa government: “There can never be any dignity if people practising a particular religion – here Christianity – are told that they can return to their homes only as Hindus. Such threats are unconstitutional and the State has a duty to intervene proactively to put a stop to that and guarantee peaceful residence to the citizens with a right to their religious conviction. All these involve the relevant fundamental rights guaranteed to citizens under Part III of our Constitution as in articles 19, 21 and 25, not to mention the articles that guarantee the right to equality before law and equal protection of the laws and the right not to be discriminated on any account.”
He went on to record the “the impossible conditions seen in the camps visited by us in G. Udayagri and Mandasur. The unacceptable numbers of people living in each of these camps and in each tent in these camps render their lives miserable in the extreme and inhuman. In one tent where I spent an hour at G. Udayagiri speaking to the inmates there were 48 persons of whom several were women. Its dimensions were about 25x15 feet. There was hardly space for any one to move or stretch, what to speak of privacy for women to change? Those women live in the full view of the male inmates, including their own brothers on the one hand and strangers on the other. Their sanitary requirements at a personal level, including of women who have not attained menopause have not been factored in by those who designed or are running these camps. If the official argument is that these women would not know how to use sanitary napkins or pads even if supplied, then they should be provided with whatever they are accustomed to, in consultation with them. It is deplorable that this has not been done. Outside these tents, there are less than 10 toilets for the thousands living in the camp with hardly 5 of them in usable condition.”
Two years on the conditions of the victims of Kandhamal remains in dire straits - homeless, jobless and bereft of any justice from the Pattnaik regime. Fr Ajay Singh, who is a senior activist and involved both in all three aspects of the Kandhamal struggle, says “the fact that the majority of the population of Kandhamal are Adivasis and dalits has only aggravated the criminal negligence of the administration.” Out of 3,300 complaints filed by the victims in the local police stations, only 831 have been registered as FIRs. Majority of the registered cases have not been investigated. The communal bias of the state administration has meant criminals have been acquitted one by one. Now the National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over 55 organisations from different parts of the country has been formed to take up the cause of justice for the victims of the Kandhamal pogrom.
I have seen how the legal system works in Kandhamal. The two fast track courts set up in a government building in Phulbani, the district capital, are examples of just how justice systems ought not to be conducted. The courtyards of the courts are filled with RSS activists, and witnesses who come are threatened almost within hearing distance of the judges. The two policemen at the court can merely look on. Inside, with the victims getting no independent legal help, they remain at the mercy of two hard pressed and entirely enlightened Public Prosecutors. Their own probity could be questioned if there were competent prosecution lawyers assisting the witnesses in cross examinations and speaking on behalf of the victims. The results are inevitable. There is small punishment in minor cases, but the major cases of murder see the killers go scot free. In the case of the gang rape of the Nun, it took the Christian defence lawyers months before they could win in the High court to get the case transferred from Kandhamal to Cuttack, which is the seat of the High Court of Orissa. But even here, the proceedings do not see the public prosecutors and police actually assisting the cause of justice.
We await the judgment which may take some time. Of the rest, the statistical summary explains the miscarriage of justice in the district.
--------- -
Complaints lodged after of 2008 3232
Cases Registered (FIRs) 831
No of Case were commuted to the fast tract courts 193
No. Cases under trial 95
No. Cases disposed (Filed as Closed) 91
No. Persons Convicted 176
Life imprisonment Sentence 5
Persons Acquitted 653
Persons arrested so far 794
----------- -
Noted jurist Vrinda Grover in her report “The Law must Change Its Course” has graphically analysed the judicial system and cautioned that the parody of the legal process will have far reaching implications. She and others have also demanded that the crime registration to investigation by special teams, and the trial process now follow the rigours procedures that have been set in motion in Gujarat after repeated interventions by the Supreme Court of India.
This brings me back to the case of the trafficked women. Archbishop Raphael Cheenath has referred the human trafficking as a major criminal and moral threat to the innocent of the Tribal and Dalit people. The most recent case came from the Tikably block, where a girl was lured away by a boy on the promise of marriage and was finally rescued from Jharkhand. In another case, four girls from the Daringbadi block were trafficked to Delhi to work as domestic labour. There were worse cases. In Gumamaha panchayat, 15 girls were rescued from Bhubaneswar railway station, from a person who called himself a supervisor of the noted company L&T. Another two girls, who were studying in class 7, were taken to Noida near Delhi and sexually abused and forced into prostitution. They managed to escape after two months and finally sent back home by an NGO. Activists say such incidents, disclosed to the investigating teams during interactions, are still the tip of the iceberg. According to some NGO activists, there are organised racketeers who are working the district now. Some local people of the district generally act as middlemen and lure the family members by job offers.
Displacement induced migration too has increased after the violence. According to Mr Kumar Raman Das, District Labour Officer, Child Labour, post-violence, families are migrating to other districts and states for work, making migrant labour of children. In Baliguda sub-division (nine blocks), many have migrated to states such as Kerala where wages are high and they are earning Rs 250 per day. Although he maintained that migration by women was not yet high, except in Daringbadi Block, he added that many girls were moving willingly to cities such as Delhi to work as domestic labour.
Most importantly, he said, while migration for work has always been present, and the state administration in Kerala and other places had been supportive so far, post-riots, there has been a sharp spurt in the number that wants to move out, which has made even the state wary and the local police uncooperative. Last year the Kerala government forced 49 migrant labourers from Kandhamal to return, while the Sub-Collector has rescued 73 migrant workers from other states. Children become the worst victim of such circumstances, tossed around and dumped like baggage, without any concern of their present or future.
Kandhamal is used to poverty and hard living. The Orissa Human Development Report, 2005 published by United Nations Development Programme in collaboration with the Federal and Orissa government records, “In 1983, the population live under the Below Poverty Line in Kandhamal district is 74 %; whereas in the same period the coastal Orissa was 67 %. In 2001, the coastal Orissa recorded a reduced percentage of people living under Below Poverty Line to 36 %; while in the same period, Kandhamal district records upward swing of people living under Below Poverty Line up to 75%.” Kandhamal is the second least developed on overall human development index while it is least on health index of Orissa. Tribal and Dalit populations living Below Poverty Line levels is as high as 92% and 87% respectively.
There seems a dim chance of the people rising above the poverty line anytime soon, because there are just no jobs, and the exiting employment schemes, reeking of corruption, seem not to reach the actual victims. Neither government nor Church seems to have come to grips with the problem. An earlier attempt to provide means of self employment to the people has been all but abandoned – businesses that were restored after the 2007 violence were once again destroyed within eight months, and that makes people afraid to invest.
Kandhamal is also used to disease and sickness. Access to health care remains critical. Even in normal times Kandhamal is endemic in malaria, brain fever with the major annual death tolls. The district records one of the highest Infant Mortality Rate and overall index in the country. The violence aftermath has only added to the woes. It is difficult to reach Medicare to the refugees. The district hospital and other block hospitals are ill-equipped to meet serious medical emergencies. The forest areas and the physical insecurity make transportation of critical ill difficult.
The matter of physical rehabilitation and housing has exposed the real abdication of duty by the state government and its officials in the district headquarters. Without any reference to national standards of rehabilitation of communal violence victims, the state fixed arbitrary rates of Rs 50,000 for fully destroyed houses, and Rs 30 to 30 thousand for homes described as partially destroyed, a convenient definition that has kept most uninhabitable houses deserving only of a lower compensation. The churches’ eagerness to be seen acting somewhere has seen them come and try to help the people complete some of the houses. But after having seen the ground situation, my fears are that not even two thirds of the house will be completed this way, unless the church at large can use the full might of the Supreme court and force the government on build the houses from scratch, and build them to human standards. There are issues of land for those whose land ownership is now being questioned because they are Dalits, and this issue also needs to be redressed. The government is not able to build a single house to completion because its support of Rs 50,000 for fully and Rs 20,000 for partial damaged houses, is barely sufficient for mere walls; leaving the house shell without roofs. Even those houses which escaped destruction, were looted, and there is no provision to help people rebuild their lives.
But I feel the real concern is about the children of Kandhamal. I accompanied various European Union teams to Kandhamal, official and unofficial, and I was struck that both men and women in the tams thought of the plight and psychological status, the hiatus in education, and the lack of expert counselling as ;possibly the most major issues in the ravaged district. Over 12000 had their studies discontinued, or severely interrupted. Children in the higher classes – the hopes of a better life for the future – were the worst affected as they did not study almost a full academic year. For the girls, who are due to sit for boards’ examination for 10th and 12th class, this really meant an end to their education, and an end to their dreams and ambitions of a better life. The trauma remains a nightmare, and it may take years before they are healed, if ever.
For me, this is the final tragedy of Kandhamal. An entire generation has been seared by the violence born out of hate and intolerance projected by a specific fascist ideology, fuelled by political and religious competiveness, the fanaticism of one man now dead, murdered by the Maoists in his own home. The tragedy has been compounded by the incompetence of the administration, the utter lack of a sense of responsibility by the bureaucracy and police. The human tragedy seems not matter to Chief minister Naveen Pattnaik, and even his political rivals, the Congress. That is the final tragedy. For Orissa and its ruling elite, Kandhamal does not exist, much less matter. It is the invisible wound, the hidden tumour, which may fester and injure thousands of poor, but does not politically hurt the rulers.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
With main Kandhamal Report
The National Solidarity Forum, a coalition of over 55 organisations from different parts of the country, which was formed this summer to take up the cause of justice for the victims of the Kandhamal pogrom held an Exhibition at Constitution Club on 22nd April depicting the carnage through drawings, paintings, photographs and semi destroyed artefacts from the burnt down Churches of the district. The exhibition, inaugurated by noted poet and Member of Parliament Javed Akhtar preceded a National People’s Tribunal. The Tribunal jury comprised of former Chief Justices of the Delhi High Court, Justice A P Shah and Justice Rajindar Sachchar. The expert panel includes film maker Mahesh Bhatt, Admiral Vishnu Bhagwat, National Advisory Council members Harsh Mander and MP Ram Dayal Munda, eminent jurist Vrinda Grover, journalist Seema Mustafa and others. The finale was a National Protest Day on 25th August 20101 in Delhi – and also in Bangalore and Mumbai – entitled “No More Kandhamal’. A list of demands has been presented to the Central and State governments by the National Solidarity Forum at the Protest march.
DEMANDS:
The National Solidarity Forum demands:
1. Immediate prosecution of the police officials who failed to register FIRs and who have allowed criminals to escape justice;
2. Prosecution of policemen who supported the communal violence in Kandhamal;
3. Prosecution of all those who are responsible for forcible conversions to Hinduism;
4. Transfer investigation of the Kandhamal violence to the Central Bureau of Investigation or SIT;
5. Full compensation for the over 5,600 houses destroyed in mass arson;
6. Compensation for victims of gender violence;
7. Compensation for loss of livelihood for two years;
8. Full compensation to all next of kin of those who died in the riots;
9. Resettlement of victims with provision of security in their villages;
10. Employment for men and women victims;
11. Trauma counselling for children, women and men;
12. Assistance for children, especially girls who cannot continue their education as their school certificates have been burnt;
13. Assistance for a large number of survivors whose documents of land and property were destroyed;
14. Implementation of a basic witness protection scheme and provision of assistance and remuneration to victims in order to ensure their testimony in court;
15. Repeal of the Orissa Freedom of Religion Act, 1967, which fuels prejudice towards religious minorities;
16. Establishment of a State Commission for Minorities, on the model of the national Commission for Minorities;
17. Prosecution of District, state and administrative officials for their dereliction of duty during violence and rehabilitation
[This article has also been published in the Indian Currents, New Delhi in its edition dated 22 August 2010]
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
