Ghar mein ghus kar marenge is a great movie dialogue. It is an even better election slogan. But can the demands of democracy and the delicate balance of international relations afford India such bravado, asks Ravi Nair.
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NEW Delhi Chatterati loves to play Chinese Whispers. The most popular one presently is, “If the US can do targeted killings outside their country, why can’t we do it?”
Targeted killings internally, within India by official agencies, or by using proxies, are an age-old practice. Too well documented to need reiteration here. Euphemistically called ‘encounter deaths’, they are endemic.
Targeted killings of non-Indian nationals
There is credible information in the public domain about the killing of a pro-Chinese Marxist tribal leader in Bangladesh in 1983 by a pro-Indian tribal leader now living in India.
Operation Leech
On February 11, 1998, an Indian tri-services detachment gunned down in cold blood six of the leadership of the nascent Arakan-based Rakhine armed group fighting the Myanmar junta. They were gunned down on Landfall Island of the Andaman group of islands.
The Rakhine now have the Arakan Army (AA), one of the more formidable armed groups fighting the Myanmar junta.
As the ragtag Myanmar army starts crumbling, many more from the Myanmar army will cross the Indian border from the Chin state and the Sagaing division. Does the government of India have a policy for the intrusion of armed soldiers of a neighbouring State into India which is cognisant of international humanitarian law?
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THE recent return by India of Burmese soldiers who had crossed the international border into Mizoram to seek shelter during fighting in the Chin State in Myanmar is troubling.
Initially, 44 personnel from the Myanmar army and police had fled across the international border into Mizoram amidst fierce fighting between Chin National Army fighters and the military junta soldiers in Myanmar’s Chin state since the evening of November 13, 2023.
The fighting was adjacent to the Zokhawthar border crossing in Mizoram. The Myanmar soldiers took shelter at the local Mizoram police station. The local police handed them over to the Assam Rifles.
The Assam Rifles, which controls the international border on the Indian side in this sector, is under the administrative control of the Union home ministry. However, all its officers are drawn from the Indian army.
How is it possible that after having its membership in the Global Alliance of National Human Rights Institutions deferred and being at the bottom of every human rights index, the National Human Rights Commission of India managed to find a collaborator in Australia-based Asia Pacific Forum to host the Biennial Conference of National Human Rights Institutions?
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THE National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRCI) is set to host the Biennial Conference of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) of Asia Pacific on September 20–21, 2023.
The conference is being organised in collaboration with the Australia-based Asia Pacific Forum (APF).
The President of India is scheduled to address the conference.
“On 21st September, 2023, the Biennial Conference will mark the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UNDHR). It will also celebrate 30 years of National Human Rights Institutions and the Paris Principles, with a sub-theme on the environment and climate change,” a press release of the NHRCI states.
In a badly drafted repetitive press release, the NHRCI makes such basic mistakes as calling the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the “UNDHR”!
In this theatre of the absurd, the APF is being represented by NHRCI on the management committee of the GANHRI even after its deferred status!
This only reflects the NHRCI’s staffing by government apparatchiks in violation of the Principles Relating to the Status of National Human Rights Institutions, also known as the Paris Principles.