Significantly changing tack to include the denial of civil liberties of common citizens in addition to its familiar constituency of Sikhs accused of sedition and terrorism, the separatist Dal Khalsa on Tuesday invited the UK-based Amnesty International to probe “the continuing abuse of human rights in Punjab.”
The group, which openly espouses the cause of a “Sikh Homeland”, has, in a five-page missive addressed to the international watchdog’s Easton Street offices in London, listed what it claims are instances of “violations of rights of prisoners, political dissenters and common citizens over the past one year.”
For the first time, also detailing instances where the Punjab police was used to crush democratic protests by teachers, doctors, farmers and workers, the letter states: “Punjab continues to reel under custodial tortures, illegal detentions, harassment and long confinement in jails.”
In fact the letter is a somewhat surprising damnation of the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party government, accusing it of deploying the police for political purposes.
“We still live in the shadows of a past under the brutal jackboots of the entire state machinery about which there has been absolutely no accountability and the issues that led to what came to be known as the Punjab problem still persist,” states the letter signed by Dal Khalsa’s political secretary Kanwar Pal Singh.
The Sikh group also condemned the state government for introducing what it says are “draconian” legal provisions like the recently amended Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act against political dissenters, the new Special Security Group Act giving police protection from prosecution on the lines of the controversial central Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and the Prevention of Damega to Public & Private Property Act “which effectively kills peoples’ right to peaceful protest on any issue.”
The Dal Khalsa letter includes a catalogue of Sikhs arrested or detained on charges of terrorism over 2010 as well as cases of former Khalistani terrorists, like Lal Singh alias Manjit Singh and Major Singh who are still being held in jail despite completing life terms, and Daljit Singh Bittu, who was arrested on fresh sedition charges but has been denied bail for more than six months.