"...Only in the last few months, lumpen gangs terrorised and killed hundreds of persons in Orissa, Karnataka, Andhra and even in Kerala. Just last month, gangs of the local mobster of Mumbai, Raj Thackeray terrorised and beat up hundreds of poor and hapless North Indians, in Mumbai itself. Some years earlier in 1993, after the Babri Masjid demolition, more than 1000 persons were killed and tens of thousands of homes and shops were burnt by marauding gangs who raped, burnt and killed at will, while the Mumbai police watched and even connived in those massacres. In 2002, more than 2000 persons were killed, thousands of women raped, tens of thousands of homes burnt, in the most horrific manner by lumpen gangs in saffron robes, who operated with complete connivance of the Gujarat police and the Gujarat government. Hardly anyone, out of the hundreds who are easily identifiable, who were involved in those massacres have been brought to book till today. 24 years ago, this month, several thousand persons were killed and tens of thousands crippled for life by the poisonous gas of Union Carbide in Bhopal, let loose because of deliberate and criminally negligent corporate cost cutting. None of those responsible have been brought to book thus far. At the same time in November 1984, 5000 Sikhs were brutally massacred in Delhi and elsewhere with total complicity of the police and the Central government. None of those terror attacks, brutalities and massacres, evoked the kind of response from the elite citizenry of this country as we are seeing today. Unfortunately, we did not hear any cries of, "Enough is enough", or, "we will not pay our taxes", or "politicians must be replaced by CEOs to run this country", from our elite at those times.' The Supreme Court had issued many directions in September 2006 to implement police reforms which several expert agencies of the government had recommended many years ago but which had not been implemented. They included setting up independent State and National Security Commissions, Police Establishment Boards, Police Complaints Authorities at the State and District levels, giving a minimum tenure to heads of field police officers at all levels including Police Chiefs etc. The thrust of these recommendations was to make the police and investigative agencies accountable to the law and free it from the strangulating control of the political executive. The Court had also asked the government, the NHRC, the Sorabji Committee and the Bureau of Police Research and Development to opine about the need for a Central Police agency to investigate and deal with Federal Crimes like Terrorism and organized crime. While the rest of the institutions gave their opinions long ago supporting such a Federal Police organization and suggesting how it could be constituted, the Central government has been dragging its feet over it. Most of the States have also not implemented the directions of the Supreme Court about the police reforms. None of the major political parties want to let go of their political control over the police which they have been misusing for partisan purposes. Thus implementation of reforms within the Police and Intelligence agencies is the main thing that could be done to improve security and reduce terror attacks. That is where public anger and energy needs to be directed – at a public campaign to force the authorities to implement the reforms. That will require sustained engagement with the government, judiciary and with Civil society. It will require time and effort –more than occasional candlelight marches..."
"While this can help in reducing the danger of terrorism, we must recognize that unless we deal with the enormous injustices in our society, we cannot eliminate such suicidal terrorism. For this, we need to do many things, but most importantly we need to fix our criminal justice system. We have an insensitive, communal, corrupt and failed judicial system. Neither the political nor the judicial establishment has the political will to fix it. We need a major public campaign for that. That is also where the public anger and outrage over the Mumbai terror attacks needs to be channelised. If we can succeed in doing that, it would be a major political achievement. If that anger only fuels reflexive jingoism, we will, as Chomsky warned, only be creating conditions for more devastating attacks in future.".. �� --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
