State terror in India

State terror in India

Daphna Whitmore reports on a fact finding tour through the Indian state of 
Andhra Pradesh

http://home.clear.net.nz/pages/wpnz/feb19-04indiafactfinding.htm

The Spark 19 February 2004

In January three New Zealanders joined an international fact finding tour to 
investigate reports of state terror in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. The 
tour had to be conducted semi-secretly as the state has never allowed foreign 
fact finding tours and has refused Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch 
permission to investigate. 

The fact finding tour was organised by the International Association of 
Progressive Lawyers and included lawyers from Belgium, Canada, Turkey and the 
Philippines, a student from Canterbury university, a trade unionist from 
Auckland, and the Spark editor. A film-maker from the US travelled with the 
team to make a documentary.

The team found state repression was widespread. Stories would appear in the 
media almost daily of fake encounters. People were picked up by the police, 
illegally detained, brutally tortured and killed. The next day a news item 
would appear, invariably the story would be the same: the police claim they 
were fired on, they returned fire in self defence, and the person was killed. 
But time and again eyewitnesses ? neighbours, relatives, friends and workmates 
? would testify that no such shoot-out ?encounter? could have occurred in that 
way because the person was under police detention.

It was widely felt that the aim of the state is to terrorise the support base 
of the People?s War Party (a Maoist organisation which has mass support in that 
area) and make it extremely difficult for them to operate in the region. 

As well as encounter killings there were other forms of repression targeting 
workers, peasants, teachers, lawyers, doctors and other professionals. Dozens 
of members of the Democratic Teachers? Federation, (DTF) have been harassed, 
illegally detained for days, sometimes weeks and some killed by the police. The 
DTF is a legal organisation with 25,000 members. It engages in peaceful 
activities, mostly around opposition to privatisation, supporting the rights of 
the local languages and the right to organise and speak out against government 
policies. 

The fact finding team heard firsthand accounts of how the police in Andhra 
Pradesh have targeted democratic teachers. Police will pick up an active member 
of the DTF, subject the person to torture; then tell the media that the teacher 
has confessed to having links with the People?s War party. The police will 
claim the teacher has implicated some other persons, and thus dozens more 
teachers are arrested. Many officials of the DTF have been forced to resign 
under threat of torture and false charges. Some have been killed in fake 
encounters.

We met a civil rights worker who had received death threats and was then run 
down by a car at high speed and suffered serious injuries. Another person we 
spoke with was a professor at Hyderabad university who told of how he had been 
taken into custody, tortured, was informed he was about to be executed and left 
to wait 45 minutes. He wasn?t killed then and there, but promised he would be 
if he continued civil rights activities.

We talked with a woman whose husband, a civil rights lawyer, had been killed 
one morning, knifed in broad daylight. The man had been very vocal in opposing 
fake encounters, and had led a campaign to get the victims? bodies returned to 
relatives. He had received death threats for months prior to his killing. The 
police were on the scene in minutes, an unusual display of efficiency, even 
more extraordinary was the presence of the chief inspector of police. The 
relatives had no doubt about top level police involvement in the killing.

Another woman recounted how her son was taken away by police at night and 
killed in a fake encounter. We heard about a popular singer who had been 
killed, cut up into 18 pieces, and her body parts scattered in different areas. 
We met unionists from a large rayon factory who were constantly being harassed 
and accused by the police of being sympathisers and members of the 
revolutionary movement. 

A group of lawyers told how they have taken cases of police brutality to the 
high courts but the courts tell them they must lay their complaints with the 
local police, the very perpetrators of the violations. The police repeatedly 
threatened their victims if they took cases to the courts or spoke of them 
publicly.

The fact finding team travelled to different regions in two separate groups. 
One of the groups was contacted by the police and told to report to a station 
where they spent the day being questioned and their passport and visa details 
were recorded.

At the conclusion of the tour a press conference was held and an interim report 
was released. Both groups in the fact finding tour had found evidence of 
vicious and systematic torture of mass leaders, trade union workers, civil 
rights leaders and ordinary citizens. The state police were routinely involved 
in harassment, kidnapping and extrajudicial killings of people they accused of 
being linked with the Maoist revolutionary movement. Many victims were wrongly 
accused and the police and hired thugs deliberately sought to create a sense of 
terror among the people. A final report is being compiled and should be 
completed soon.

Despite the horrors the people were determined to stand up to the repression. 
One family was asked how do they maintain their courage? They answered, 
?because we have the support of the people?. 

The message people repeatedly asked us to convey is that India is not a 
democracy, that is all a sham. The system is fascistic to the core. o

















                
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