CHALLENGE THE DARKNESS

[December 2006] - Jaswant Singh's last appearance in North America was marked by an ominous speech in which he accused the then director general of police, Kanwar Pal Singh (KPS Gill), of being the orchestrater of the disappearances of 6,017 people - mostly men and boys - in the Amritsar district of Punjab. At the end of his speech, Jaswant Singh talked about martyrdom as the greatest sacrifice for justice, as if he knew his life would end for this cause. And it did.

Jaswant Singh spoke at the Dixie Road Gurdwara in Toronto in April 1995. By September he was dead - abducted, tortured, killed and secretly cremated by the Punjab police. He met the same fate as the tens of thousands of Sikhs who disappeared between 1984 and 1994.

A video of Jaswant Singh's speech was made public in August by Ensaaf, a human rights organization that has been actively researching the disappeared and following legal cases in and out of India's justice system. Jaskaran Kaur, founder and president, said she came upon the video at an event in Toronto last year. Ensaaf added subtitles and released the video on its web site.

"We hope it will mobilize people around this issue," Kaur said. Ensaaf has been screening the video to small groups around the United States. Kaur said the video maay used as evidence if Gill is investigated and tried in court for his involvement in the decade of mass disappearances and extrajudicial killings.

CASE FILED

With Ensaaf's help, Jaswant Singh's widow filed a legal petition with the Punjab and Haryana High Court in September. The petition asked for the investigation and prosecution of KPS for his role in the disappearance of her husband.

Ensaaf drafted a part of the petition that asked the court to apply international human rights doctrine of superior responsibility, meaning that a person in a position of power is responsible for the criminal acts of his or her subordinates.

Sukhman Singh, Ensaaf's co-director, wants KPS prosecuted. "International standards are clear. [KPS] had power over his subordinates. He should not escape justice just because India does not have a law," Sukhman Singh said. "The court should reference international cases that have already dealt with mass crimes."

Six of KPS's subordinate police officials were convicted in connection with Jaswant Singh's death, ten years after his disappearance. Two of them were convicted for his murder and given life sentences.

THE SPEECH

Jaswant Singh starts by reciting a moving fable about a small lamp-light that challenges the darkness and would not let the darkness settle. “Today, that darkness has taken over truth with great strength and self-respecting Punjab, like a lamp, is challenging the darkness. I pray that this light is kept lit,” Jaswant Singh said.

He said he came to Canada for a specific mission: to talk about a report that describes the “oppression of the past ten years.”

When Jaswant Singh began working on the report, he was trying to answer one question, he said. "The question was: why are thousands of mothers awaiting their sons to return?"

Jaswant Singh started collecting statistics of how many people had disappeared, but the families of the disappeared were not willing to publicly say that their loved ones had disappeared. They feared that by investigating the issue, if their loved ones were still alive, they would be killed. “Don’t talk about this,” was the common answer.
 
Jaswant Singh then made a rough estimate that 2,000 men and boys had disappeared in the Amritsar district. He filed a petition before the Punjab and Haryana High Court on behalf of some the families that were willing to talk. They asked the court to order an investigation into the whereabouts of their missing family members. The government made an affidavit denying knowledge of any missing persons in Punjab.

When the issue progressed, Jaswant Singh said that the person in charge of the oppression, KPS, held a press conference in Amritsar in which he said the missing youth had gone abroad to earn a living. KPS also suggested that the human rights activists had only one motive: to prop up their propaganda so that there was no peace in Punjab. He also accused them of being agents of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, hatching a conspiracy to undermine the Punjab police and to re-incite militancy.

Jaswant Singh continued to look for the disappeared and began collecting evidence. He went to the cremation grounds and asked the employees when and how many unclaimed dead bodies the police had given them. Some said they burned eight to 10 every day. Some said there was no way to keep an account, sometimes a truck full of bodies came, and sometimes only a few. They told Jaswant Singh to check the records of the municipal committee that supplies firewood to cremate all unclaimed bodies.

“We went there and saw the full account of our disappeared brothers written there,” Jaswant Singh said. The records of how much firewood was issued daily also had data of how many unclaimed dead bodies were left and by which police officer. It also had names of head officers and how many bodies they brought.

"In Amritsar district’s three municipal cremation grounds, 6,017 dead bodies were clearly recorded as being those of Sikh men between the ages of 15 and 35," Jaswant Singh said. “And our brothers were not the only ones recorded on that list. Women’s dead bodies were also recorded. And we were amazed that the records also included dead bodies of the elderly.”
 
Jaswant Singh went back to the high court to ask for an investigation to identify the dead bodies. According to the law, photos and clothes of an unclaimed dead body must be kept until the survivors claim them.

The court responded: “This is not a public interest litigation. This creates a huge issue. Instead, send each family to whom the dead bodies belongs here. We will give them information.”  The court would only identify those bodies that were already identified.

“A mockery has been made of the law,” Jaswant Singh said. “We may go the Supreme Court or try another legal action, but the greatest court of all is the people’s court. We want to go to the people’s court worldwide and say to the world: You have called us terrorists, you have called us communalists, but those whom you have called redeemers of peace, those whom you have called prophets of democracy, recognize their reality and then tell us who is ultimately the terrorist and who is righteous.”

Jaswant Singh said the panth had a responsibility to learn how to keep a complete record of any oppression. “We say about 50,000 or about a million – we say all that. The educated people of the world do not trust that. They want exact figures.” 

Jaswant Singh ended with a plea to protect human rights: “From a human rights platform, I will definitely say this to you, the Khalsa was created to protect human rights – the human rights of the world. And if you can’t protect your own human rights, you will lose your identity.”