C'da, This op ed from the AT seems pretty balanced. Even you should find it so (well, except may be the first couple of paras:)).
I will have to respond to the other thread later. But this should warm the cockles of your heart :) Highlights mine. --Ram ** ** *The other side of terror **- Ranen Kumar Goswami* *I*f ULFA terror comes, can Army be far behind? *The dubious distinction of inviting Army excesses into Assam primarily goes to ULFA*, the outfit which cannot carry forward its struggle for freedom unless it turns the State into a killing field and thus resorting to unadulterated terror. The latest intensified Army operation, codenamed Rhino-II, has also followed the massacre of Hindi-speaking labourers in upper Assam. *As expected, the ULFA supporters are crying hoarse over the move and saying, as they always do, that Army action is no answer to the insurgency problem. They do not mind when the outfit goes on a killing spree making innocents the targets of its ruthless attacks. These deaths do not disturb their patriotic siesta. But patriotism and concerns for human rights well up in them the moment military hurdles are raised against ULFA terror. And for a section of them, who call themselves human rights activists, only ULFA killers have human rights while their victims have none. Agreed, military solution is no answer to the insurgency problem. But should there not be military resistance to terrorist violence? *An analogy can be drawn here with another problem, crime. Crime is an offshoot of the diseases afflicting a society, and police solution is no answer to thefts, robberies and other such misdeeds. But should there not be police resistance to thefts, robberies and kidnappings? We must say a firm 'no' to attempts for a military solution to the ULFA problem. But military resistance to terrorist activities is a must. *Here is a problem, and a big one at that. The Army's records are not at all impressive*. There are quite a number of instances where the Army has itself created terror while countering ULFA terror. Debojit killing, Kakapathar incidents and fake encounters are some of the dirty spots it cannot possibly shake off its image. Not to speak of counter-insurgency operations, even in normal times some of its behaviour in the civilian arena do not allow us to hold the force in high esteem. *Early in 2006, a group of jawans from the Rajputana Rifles* threw six passengers out of a speeding train in Uttar Pradesh, killing five of them instantly. The provocation for this savagery was a trifling dispute over whether or not, the compartment they were travelling in was reserved for armed forces personnel. Can Army men behave like ordinary criminals? *An incident on the night of January 1* this year proved they can. Army personnel, including officers in uniform, went on the rampage inside the Park Street police station, Kolkata at 2 am. Brandishing automatic weapons, they beat up policemen, damaged furniture and freed two errant colleagues after forcing open the lock-up. The duo was detained on charges of molestation and disorderly behaviour on New Year's Eve. Nine civilians, who had also been detained on a charge of harassingly women, escaped in the melee. Earlier, trouble started around midnight on December 31 when Major Chandra Pratap Singh, accused of misbehaving with women in a hotel, was accosted by the security staff. Inebriated, he assaulted them and damaged the banquet hall furniture. He was arrested and taken to the police station. His companion, a Captain, was also arrested on a charge of disorderly behaviour. Inside the station, they abused the policemen, held the duty officer by the scruff of his neck and assaulted him. Two hours later, three vehicles carrying a Lieutenant Colonel, a Major, a Captain and eight jawans pulled up in front of the station and all hell broke loose on the policemen on duty. *In 2003, Colonel HS Kohli*, commanding officer of an artillery regiment, took photographs of civilians splashed with tomato ketchup and posing as corpses, before handing them over to his seniors for gallantry award recommendation. The photographs, Kohli said, were proof that anti-India rebels were killed during an operation in Bada Nagadun near Silchar in Assam. Giving details of the fraud, an Army spokesman said on November 26, 2004 in New Delhi that the deception was discovered when the claim was being processed. Sensing something amiss, court martial proceedings were soon launched against the Colonel. Kohli was dismissed at the end of the proceedings. A major, whose name was not revealed, was shapped with five years' loss of service for conniving with the Colonel. A big scandal was the faking of killings of 'enemy personnel' in the Siachen glaciers in 2003. An Army spokesman said in New Delhi on May 8, 2004 that a court of inquiry had ordered disciplinary action against Colonel KD Singh, Major Surinder Singh and Major Rohit Lama for faking killings. *A glaring example of how far the Army can go in abusing human rights when they are given unlimited power in counter-insurgency operations, is that of Thangjam Manorama of Manipur.* Taking cover of the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act, jawans from Assam Rifles allegedly raped and killed her. She was arrested on July 10, 2004 and found dead the next day. Angry people of the State demanded justice from the Government, which till now, has eluded them. What difference remains then between the terrorist acts committed by the militants who profess to be outside the law and the terrorist acts committed by the Army who does them under the cover of law? The Manorama episode warns us that Army actions, not under adequate civilian control, can rob us of all our democratic rights. The latest instances of military ruthlessness have come to light in Kashmir. *The Hindu broke the news on February 3, 2007 that at least three separate Indian Army units in Jammu and Kashmir had participated in a series of murders of innocent civilians organised by a group of rouge police officers in Ganderbal, near Srinagar. Officers of the 5 Rashtriya Rifles, the 13 Rashtriya Rifles and the 24 Rashtriya Rifles* staged encounters and filed false FIRs (first information reports) to make it appear that the civilian victims were terrorists who had been killed in legitimate counter-insurgency operations. The murders first came to light in January following an internal investigation into the mysterious disappearance of Kokernag resident Abdul Rahman Padder. A special investigation team of the Jammu and Kashmir Police later established that Padder's killing was part of a series of murders carried out to make the perpetrators eligible for rewards and promotions. The FIR, filed on October, 2006, by the Army says a Karachi-based terrorist code-named Abu Zahid was killed in an operation by the 13 Rashtriya Rifles. An assault rifle and a wireless set were recovered, the FIR claimed. However investigators later came to know that the supposed terrorist was in fact Shaukat Khan, a cleric from Banihal in Doda district. Like the other victims, Khan was reported missing from Srinagar shortly before his death. Earlier, on February 17, 2006, the 5 Rashtriya Rifles claimed to have shot dead an unidentified terrorist. According to the Army, it recovered a Kalashnikov rifle, ammunition and a pistol from the body. Now, however, police investigators and local residents have identified the body as that of Kokernag resident Nasir Ahmad Deka. He was a perfume seller, not terrorist. In another case, a missing Larnoo resident, Ali Mohammad Padroo, is believed to have been killed by the rogue police unit and the troops of the 24 Rashtriya Rifles near Kangan. The FIR filed at Kangan by the Army again claimed that Padroo was an unidentified terrorist. The 24 Rashtriya Rifles troops were also responsible for the killing of Ghulam Nabi Wani, who, according to an FIR filed at Sumbai on March 14, 2006 was an 'unidentified terrorist'. And now investigation says he was not. *These shocking incidents of barbarity have erased the borderline between the utter disregard for human life demonstrated by ULFA and Kashmiri terrorists and the utter disregard of human life demonstrated by the men in uniforms. Likewise, there's no difference between support to the abuse of human rights of ULFA and opposition to the abuse of human rights by the Army or vice versa. Abuse of human rights runs counter to the well-being of a society, of a State and a country. The society must rise in protest against such abuses, whoever be the perpetrator.*
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