Teesta Setalvad
While this
week should have been devoted to the unfortunate verdict in the ZakiaJafri
(supported by CJP) case against NarendraModi and Others, the pressing ground
level reality at Muzaffarnagar, Shamli, Baghpat and Meerut has compelled the
writer to change gear. Over the next few weeks I shall offer the reader an
analysis of the judgement of the Court.This
week is dedicated to the thousands suffering in bitter cold in Western UP, in
bitter cold and poor conditions, with an Appeal to India and Indians to find
their heart and visit and re-visit the tragedy:-
No man’s land
is the land is, under international law, land between nations or disputing
parties, land under dispute, where uncertainty and ambiguity govern, land that
no authority or state controls but significantly where no laws, national or
others, apply. Internally displaced persons (IDPs), especially those internally
and forcibly displaced by manmade tragedies, or deliberate plans of development
or natural disasters are recognized as among the world’s most vulnerable
people. Especially because they have not crossed over international borders but
remain under the protection of their own government, even though the abdication
of the fundamental duties of the government and rights of the government may be
the cause of their desperate flight.
Responsibility
for their welfare must and should rest with the state. However the culture of
impunity prevalent in a country that has failed to book powerful state actors
for their role in the prevention of perpetrated violence, i.e. their
fundamental failure in governance to, without prejudice or bias, protect the
lives of the poor, underprivileged as much as the politically shrill and
powerful, has penetrated to blurring responsibility for the plight and
conditions of IDPs.
In 2002, as
1,68,000 IDPs were forcibly and cruelly evicted from their homes by marauding
mobs in Gujarat, Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) supported a PIL that
finally ensured that Gujarat state accepted responsibility for the rations
(grains, tea, milk and sugar) been until then borne by community organisations.
The action that forced them into living as cattle herd in essentially difficult
conditions was made worse with the state, in a desperate hurry to “clean up”
the remains of the blood and gore, wanted to rush into elections and forcibly
close the camps.
Eleven years
later the response of the state, under a different political dispensation,
after the violence in Uttar Pradesh in the four districts of Muzaffarnagar,
Shamli, Meerut and Baghpat, affected by violence is worse, not better. Faced
with five petitions in the Supreme Court of India, and keen to ensure a gloss
on its blemished imaged the Nine Reports filed by the Uttar Pradesh government
are obfuscations of the reality on the ground. As lead petitioners in one of
the cases that ahs presented significant contrary data to the Court, we have
shown that the reports of the district officials contradict what the state is
officially saying to the highest court of the land.
Over 33,000
persons, IDPs, forcibly displaced by the unleashed terror of a more powerful
Jat community in the four districts lived until they were forcibly evicted over
the past few days on open state and central government land, in sub-human
conditions at bitterly cold temperatures (many of the camps are out in the
open, just tents above ground that is treacherous and cold as night settles in;
on days where it rains, wet bitter cold has resulted in deaths). Nineteen camps
in Shamli district and two in Loi were and are testimony to gross abdication of
state responsibility as food and clothing was donated generously by private
donations and individuals; State presence in distribution had been limited to a
fortnight except the inadequate quantities of milk that continued to come to
Mallakpur relief camp until recently.
Even as the
state cynically carried out these forcible evictions, 3 year oldUvez lost the
struggle for his life and died in the Manna Majra camp on December 23-24 2013.
In the affidavit we had filed before the Supreme Court in mid-December, we had
listed the names of 23 persons, child and adult who had died in the camps
because of ailments related essentially to the inhuman conditions in
sub-human temperatures. Two twin baby
girls had died within hours of being born as far back as September 10, 2013 at
the Jaula camp. Days before we travelled again through the camps where it is
impossible to stay after 5 p.m. as wind and cold settles in, two day old
Chhotu( he was not given a name) son of Manga breathed his last two days after
breathing life; one day old Chhotu (he was not even given a name) son of Azad
died at Phugana on November 28, 2013.A few kilometers away from the Mallakpur
camp is a colony of re-settlers, displaced by a flood 30 years back. (Rathoda
,Baghpat) and Soop-Silana) but the state has seen no desire to vacate them from
their irregular habitats which is now permanent home. Both sets of IDPs had to inadvertently make
homes on forest/state government land; yet the state appears to be treating the
two sets of IDPs differently, why?
The biting thought
that kept creeping up to me as we witnesses state denial and callousness over
these deaths, was the question, which was worse? Deaths by the perpetrated mob
violence (over 80 dead and a few dozen missing) or those deaths that were
avoidable and took place under the state’s redoubled watch as our own people
live in abysmal conditions as IDPs? Do we as Indians even care?
The vile
statements of Gujarat scion Modi, “Relief
Camps are Babymaking factories” have become iconic of state abdication and
cruelty. (The speech made by him on September 9, 2002 at the temple town at
Becharaji in Mehsana was the launching pad of his GauravYatra and 2002 election
campaign). Today, MulayamsinghYadav’s sickening “those in relief camps are
Congress and BJP workers” and his chief secretary claiming “No one dies of
cold; go check Siberia” have joined this merciless iconography. Finally pushed
by outraged criticism, the UP government was compelled, 3 days after Yadav’s
outrageous comments, through the findings of a government committee, to admit
that 34 deaths had indeed taken place in
the relief camps between September 7 and December 20.
Our plea in
the petition is that the Supreme Court appoints a Court Commission (just like
at the time of the Right to Food Petition) to ensure regular and impartial
monitoring of the ground situation with feed back to the Court. Of the 436 FIRs
filed, little action has been taken against accused. Powerful accused with
allegiance to the BJP, SangeetSom have not just been released on bail but were
felicitated at Agra with the PM in waiting in tow. Chilling accounts of
gendered violence, brutal, on 19 girls and women await legal and judicial note
and redressal.
Responsibility
for the protection of fundamental rights (right to life, property and
protection before the law) under the Indian Constitutional scheme lies not just
with the state government, but ultimately also with the Centre.The abdication
in the case of what has come to be names as the Muzaffarnagarviolence, must and
does also lie with the Centre. At least as far as the IDPs are concerned what
stopped the Centre from using the Army to ensure that our own people, little
babies and pregnant women (there are over 100 in the camps) are well fed,
clothed and protected from the cold? The same obduration that, across party
lines has little respect for human lives.
It is this
bitter reality that impelled a mass movement in this country to demand the
enactment of a law that fixes responsibility for perpetrated and mass communal
violence and humane rehabilitation - the Prevention of Communal and Targeted
Violence (Right to Justice and Reparations) Bill. Strident opponents of the
bill, including those forces that have benefitted most from communal
polarization, apart from using their rank and file in acts of violence, have so
far succeeded in brazenly bullying the Centre from even tabling the proposed
law for sane discussion. It remains to be seen if this UPA II government, floundering
and weak, will have the will to keep a promise made through the Common Minimum
Programme in 2004.
Ends
