Decade of Disappearances - Committee for Information and Initiative on Punjab (CIIP)

B. Decade of Disappearances

1984 exploded in Punjab, beginning the government’s active armed oppression of Sikhs and a violent police crackdown of the Sikh insurgency. On June 3, 1984, the martyrdom anniversary of the fifth Sikh Guru, the Indian army launched Operation Bluestar. The army invaded the Golden Temple complex, the center of Sikh religious and political life, and forty-one other major Sikh gurudwaras[8] with tanks, 70,000 troops, and CS gas,[9] and imposed a statewide curfew. The government forbade news coverage of the army attacks, expelled foreign journalists, and cut phone lines across Punjab.[10] Eyewitnesses reported that over 10,000 pilgrims and 1300 workers had gathered inside the complex and could not leave before the attack for fear of arrest.[11] The police detained Red Cross volunteers at Jallianwala Bagh, near the Golden Temple complex, preventing them from accessing the pilgrims and workers.[12]

Eyewitnesses like Ranbir Kaur, a schoolteacher, described policemen tying the hands of Sikhs behind their backs with their turbans[13] and shooting them at point-blank range. Although the official White Paper cited the deaths of only eighty-three Army personnel and 493 terrorists, eyewitnesses cited figures ranging from 4000 to 8000 people killed, mostly pilgrims.[14]

Operation Bluestar alienated the Sikh population, casting the Indian government as a regime oppressive toward Sikhs. On October 31, 1984, two of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated her in retaliation for Operation Bluestar. After the assassination, local political officials orchestrated pogroms against Sikhs in New Delhi and other cities across India, killing at least 3000 people, and burning Sikh houses and businesses.[15] As a result of the destruction, 50,000 Sikhs were homeless in New Delhi alone.[16] Several eyewitnesses and relief workers identified political

*** Top of Page 272 ***

party leaders in Delhi who had led mobs and encouraged them to violence.[17] The government, however, has not charged a single political or police official for his role in this violence.

The decade-long police crackdown of the insurgency after Operation Bluestar led to the deaths of at least 10,000 people in Punjab.[18] Some estimates range as high as 200,000 Sikhs killed.[19] Human Rights Watch (HRW) describes Operation Rakshak II, the police counter-insurgency movement, as “the most extreme example of a policy in which the end appeared to justify any and all means, including torture and murder.”[20] A system of rewards for police for the capture of militants led to an increase in disappearances and extra-judicial executions.[21] Although all Punjabi Sikhs were vulnerable to disappearance, police especially targeted Amritdharis (initiated Sikhs), those who were politically active with the Akali Dal parties, and families and friends of suspected militants.[22]

In 1994, in response to reports of mass disappearances orchestrated by the police,[23] Jaswant S. Khalra, Chairman of the Human Rights Wing of the Akali Dal, and Jaspal S. Dhillon, then General Secretary of the Wing, investigated illegal cremations conducted by the Punjab Police between 1984 and 1994 in three crematoria in Amritsar district. They focused their research on illegal cremations, putting aside other possible ends of the victims’ bodies, such as dismemberment, entombment, or dumping in canals. They also limited their research to only one of the seventeen districts in Punjab.[24] Within this limited focus, they discovered 2097 illegal cremations.[25]

A few months after Khalra and Dhillon publicized their findings, Khalra filed a writ petition in the Punjab and Haryana High Court to investigate these mass cremations. The High Court dismissed his petition on grounds of vagueness, and Khalra moved the Supreme Court.[26] While the case was

*** Top of Page 273 ***

pending before the Supreme Court, the police abducted Khalra from outside of his house.[27] The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), India’s investigative agency, ultimately charged nine police officers for his abduction, and the case against these police officers is now proceeding in the Patiala CBI Court.[28] The Supreme Court also ordered the NHRC to investigate these mass cremations and determine relevant issues, such as compensation.[29]

Here is bowflex free weights of fitness equipment for exercise equipment bowflex.