Indian Atrocities

[madanthonywayne]

I am sick of people always blaming the US for all the worlds ills. So, under the glass houses doctrine, let us discuss some of the atrocities committed by the great nation of India.

Let's see, we've got widespread rape by Indian security forces:

"As the conflict in Kashmir enters its fourth year, central and state authorities have done little to stop the widespread practice of rape by Indian security forces in Kashmir. Indeed, when confronted with the evidence of rape, time and again the authorities have attempted to impugn the integrity of the witnesses, discredit the testimony of physicians or simply deny the charges everything except order a full inquiry and prosecute those responsible for rape".
(Asia Watch and Physicians for Human Rights, May 09, 1993)

"(On February 23, 1991), at least 23 women were reportedly raped in their homes at gunpoint (at Kunan Poshpora in Kashmir). Some are said to have been gang-raped, others to have been raped in front of their children ... The youngest victim was a girl of 13 named Misra, the oldest victim, name Jana, was aged 80".
(Amnesty International, March 1992)

"Young girls were now being raped systematically by entire (Indian) army units rather than by a single soldier as before. Girls are taken to soldier's camps and held naked in their tents for days on end. Many never return home....Women are strung up naked from trees and their breast lacerated with knives, as the (Indian) soldiers tell them that their breast will never give milk again to a newborn militant. Women are raped in front of their husbands and children, or paraded naked through villages and beaten on the breasts."
(The Independent, September 18, 1990)
http://hellinparadise.150m.com/examples.htm

Torture:

"The most common torture methods are severe beatings, sometimes while the victim is hung upside down, and electric shocks. People have also been crushed with heavy rollers, burned, stabbed with sharp instruments, and had objects such as chilies or thick sticks forced into their rectums. Sexual mutilation has been reported".
(Amnesty International, March 1992)

Gee, that sounds worse than being put in a pile of naked men while some hick chick laughs at you.

Then there's the treatment of their "untouchables":

Human rights abuses against these people, known as Dalits, are legion. A random sampling of headlines in mainstream Indian newspapers tells their story: "Dalit boy beaten to death for plucking flowers"; "Dalit tortured by cops for three days"; "Dalit 'witch' paraded naked in Bihar"; "Dalit killed in lock-up at Kurnool"; "7 Dalits burnt alive in caste clash"; "5 Dalits lynched in Haryana"; "Dalit woman gang-raped, paraded naked"; "Police egged on mob to lynch Dalits".

And if you thought it was bad in the US for blacks before the civil rights movement:

"Dalits are not allowed to drink from the same wells, attend the same temples, wear shoes in the presence of an upper caste, or drink from the same cups in tea stalls," said Smita Narula, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch, and author of Broken People: Caste Violence Against India's "Untouchables." Human Rights Watch is a worldwide activist organization based in New York.

India's Untouchables are relegated to the lowest jobs, and live in constant fear of being publicly humiliated, paraded naked, beaten, and raped with impunity by upper-caste Hindus seeking to keep them in their place. Merely walking through an upper-caste neighborhood is a life-threatening offense.

"There have been large-scale abuses by the police, acting in collusion with upper castes, including raids, beatings in custody, failure to charge offenders or investigate reported crimes," said Narula.

That same year, 68,160 complaints were filed against the police for activities ranging from murder, torture, and collusion in acts of atrocity, to refusal to file a complaint. Sixty two percent of the cases were dismissed as unsubstantiated; 26 police officers were convicted in court.

And this bit here is almost unbelievable:

Despite the fact that untouchability was officially banned when India adopted its constitution in 1950, discrimination against Dalits remained so pervasive that in 1989 the government passed legislation known as The Prevention of Atrocities Act. The act specifically made it illegal to parade people naked through the streets, force them to eat feces, take away their land, foul their water, interfere with their right to vote, and burn down their homes.

They had to pass a special law to make it clear that it was illegal to forcibly parade people naked thru the streets; make them eat shit; take their land; foul their water, and burn down their homes!!!! WTF!!!!!!

And check out this horrific story:

A 42-year-old Dalit woman was gang-raped and then burnt alive after she, her husband, and two sons had been held in captivity and tortured for eight days. Her crime? Another son had eloped with the daughter of the higher-caste family doing the torturing. The local police knew the Dalit family was being held, but did nothing because of the higher-caste family's local influence.

Perhaps Brian de Palma could make a movie about this.

And, of course, they have great respect for the rights of women and children:

Thousands of pre-teen Dalit girls are forced into prostitution under cover of a religious practice known as devadasis, which means "female servant of god." The girls are dedicated or "married" to a deity or a temple. Once dedicated, they are unable to marry, forced to have sex with upper-caste community members, and eventually sold to an urban brothel.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2003/06/0602_030602_untouchables.html
This was just the first two links I found under "Indian Atrocities". Maybe you guys can find some more. I'd say this stuff makes the infamous abu ghraib seem like fraternity pranks.

 

[GeoffP]

....whoa. Is that for real?

 

[ashura]

I am sick of people always blaming the US for all the worlds ills. So, under the glass houses doctrine, let us discuss some of the atrocities committed by the great nation of India.

As an American, I place the US on a higher standard than I do any other nation. We should be better, and for a great amount of things we are. That doesn't mean that whenever we get a finger pointed at us for doing something wrong that we should childishly point back. It means that we should either accept that we did something wrong and do our best to prevent it from happening again, or do our damned best to prove that we did the right thing. Again, not compare what we do to what another nation does because, quite simply, we should be better.

 

[S.A.M.]

Its terrible, especially with the decade and a half of war at the border

In Kashmir
http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/kashmir/doda.htm
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/09/08/india14159.htm


In Sri Lanka
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpa...op/News/World/Countries and Territories/India

Hopefully they are trying to make things more transparent


The challenge before the COAS (Chief of Army Staff) is clear - institutionalizing a culture where human rights are not seen as adversarial to the army. This will not be easy. The short-lived success of the army's goodwill initiative in the Ladakh region (Operation Sadabhavana) epitomizes the problems ahead. Pushed largely by one senior officer, the process was relegated to the backburner soon after his departure from Leh. In that sense, as good as it may be to have a progressive COAS; this cannot replace systematic and institutional change in the army.

Human rights violations, unfortunately, continue to be reported regularly, leading one to believe these are systemic and institutional. Even in situations where the protection of special legislation (e.g. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act) may be available, the current practices of the army are unlikely to pass the required threshold of international humanitarian law. In cases where action on complaints is taken, the focus remains on the individual violators; no examination is made to ask if the violations are institutionalized in the de-facto operating procedures of the army. This is necessary, because some standard operation procedures - e.g. 'taking no prisoners' in fire-fights in Counter-Intelligence Operations (CI Ops), and the use of torture to extract information - inherently lend themselves to rights violations.

Especially with th effects on army personnel
http://www.indiatogether.org/2007/jan/fah-army.htm

he Indian Army has been surprisingly candid in releasing figures of the suicides and fratricides that have wracked the force in the recent past. A report out of Kashmir in the Himal of December 2006 carries the revealing statistics that in October this year there were ten fratricide cases as against only three deaths in combat operations. All told, in the first ten months of the year, the army lost 55 soldiers to terrorism in Kashmir, while one third more took their own lives. It is not a figure that any army would release of its own, since morale related security reasons would have stymied such openness.

That 500 defense personnel have reportedly either committed suicide or were killed by colleagues in the past four years indicates that the problem has crossed the threshold in which it could be treated as internal to the army. The Ministry of Defense has had to write to the Army to act more liberally in the grant of leave to its soldiers as a stress relieving measure. This is the first issue that the newly appointed Minister of Defence, A K Antony, has involved himself with, indicating the concern in South Block.

Cops are the same, underpaid, undereducated, undertrained and overwhelmed
So they are now sent for destressing programs to help them to control rage and frustration

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1190361.cms

Fortunately our problems are all being addressed by the government and the people.

 

[S.A.M.]

As an American, I place the US on a higher standard than I do any other nation. We should be better, and for a great amount of things we are. That doesn't mean that whenever we get a finger pointed at us for doing something wrong that we should childishly point back. It means that we should either accept that we did something wrong and do our best to prevent it from happening again, or do our damned best to prove that we did the right thing. Again, not compare what we do to what another nation does because, quite simply, we should be better.

Perhaps but that is no reason to ignore the fact that India has the capacity to do better than what is present:

Here for example is Boston Globe article on India's role in supporting the military junta in Burma

WHEN ARGUING for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council or assuring the Bush administration that India can be trusted with American nuclear technology - even though it has not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - Indian officials recite the mantra that India is the world's biggest democracy. But India's shameful collaboration with the military junta in Burma that has been arresting and killing Buddhist monks and civilian protesters raises a serious question: Is India betraying its democratic values for the sake of its great-power ambitions?

There is no mystery about the reasons for India's complicity with the Burmese generals. There are purely commercial motives, a thirst for access to Burma's oil and natural gas reserves. There's a desire to gain the junta's cooperation in crushing insurgent groups that have been crossing from Burma into India's northeast to mount guerrilla operations. But above all, India has abandoned solidarity with Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her colleagues because Indian policy makers are obsessed by their strategic competition with China.

India had once been Suu Kyi's most ardent supporter. She lived in India for several years with her late husband; her mother once served as Burma's ambassador to India. And of course Buddhism sprang from India.

But when Human Rights Watch called last week for a Security Council arms embargo on the junta, it named India along with China and Russia as "nations supplying Burma with weapons that the military uses to commit human rights abuses." Human Rights Watch described "a vast array of military hardware" India has supplied to the junta, including artillery, aircraft, tanks, and helicopters for use against minority ethnic groups in border areas and citizen protesters.

In other words, India sells some of the world's most vicious dictators weapons to kill people in Burma who yearn for democracy. This is not the behavior of a true democracy.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/asia/articles/2007/10/14/indias_identity_crisis_in_burma/

Certainly not a role I want to see as the future of Indian policy.

Its good to keep the media light focused on such things so they don't become an acceptable part of the government policy

 

[ashura]

Perhaps but that is no reason to ignore the fact that India has the capacity to do better than what is present

There's a difference between pointing out the fact that India has the capacity to do better, and specifically using India's weaknesses as a response to criticism of our country and it's policies.

 

[madanthonywayne]

As an American, I place the US on a higher standard than I do any other nation.

Well sure, but it gets a bit tiring to see damn near every thread turned into a bash America fest.

And really, I can't get over that Prevention of Atrocities Act. Was poisoning wells legal prior to that? Or burning down houses? Or stripping people naked and forcing them to march down the street? Or forcing them to literally eat shit!

 

[madanthonywayne]

There's a difference between pointing out the fact that India has the capacity to do better, and specifically using India's weaknesses as a response to criticism of our country and it's policies.

It's called perspective. America's ills are magnified and put on the Jumbo-tron by people from nations in which our worst actions would be a huge improvement.

Look at the De Palma movie highlighting a single infamous rape commited by US soldiers. Yet in India this practice is so widespread as to seem a deliberate policy. And nary a movie in site. Until I did the google search, I'd never heard a word about it.

 

[S.A.M.]

And really, I can't get over that Prevention of Atrocities Act. Was poisoning wells legal prior to that? Or burning down houses? Or stripping people naked and forcing them to march down the street? Or forcing them to literally eat shit!

No, but accountability is required. A law makes people accountable.

Eating shit as a form of torture is not a new phenomenon.

You must have heard of the expression "eat shit and die!"?
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...qg8&q=forced+to+eat+feces+torture&btnG=Search

Well sure, but it gets a bit tiring to see damn near every thread turned into a bash America fest.

In terms of sheer magnitude of conflicts and deaths caused in countries, you beat everyone hollow; it's hard to escape the US influence in any conflict ridden country in the world today. The sad part, of course, is how little the people of the US themselves care about it.

 

[S.A.M.]

There's a difference between pointing out the fact that India has the capacity to do better, and specifically using India's weaknesses as a response to criticism of our country and it's policies.

Hopefully, seeing it happen in other countries will give them a fresh perspective on how they appear to others.

 

[madanthonywayne]

No, but accountability is required. A law makes people accountable.

Yes, but weren't those things already illegal? I can't imagine a legal system that would allow the actions covered by the Prevention of Atrocities Act.

Eating shit as a form of torture is not a new phenomenon.
You must have heard of the expression "eat shit and die!"?

Sure, but I'd never heard of anyone actually doing it. I mean, if I tell someone to "blow me!", I hardly expect them to drop to their knees and perform fellatio!

 

[spidergoat]

Well sure, but it gets a bit tiring to see damn near every thread turned into a bash America fest.

That's because you seem unable to comprehend the enormity of the mistakes we have made recently as a nation. We have (had) something like the Prevention of Atrocities Act, called the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which the Bush Justice Department specifically undermined by condoning some forms of torture.

 

[S.A.M.]

Yes, but weren't those things already illegal? I can't imagine a legal system that would allow the actions covered by the Prevention of Atrocities Act.

They wouldn't but most of our laws range from the British and need updating.

Sure, but I'd never heard of anyone actually doing it. I mean, if I tell someone to "blow me!", I hardly expect them to drop to their knees and perform fellatio!

But the fact that there is a phrase called blow me, should tell you it does happen often enough to warrant a phrase.

 

[ashura]

It's called perspective. America's ills are magnified and put on the Jumbo-tron by people from nations in which our worst actions would be a huge improvement.

And I still disagree with using that tactic as a response to criticism. The point you're trying to make is "Hey, we could be a lot worse."

 

[Buffalo Roam]

As an American, I place the US on a higher standard than I do any other nation. We should be better, and for a great amount of things we are. That doesn't mean that whenever we get a finger pointed at us for doing something wrong that we should childishly point back. It means that we should either accept that we did something wrong and do our best to prevent it from happening again, or do our damned best to prove that we did the right thing. Again, not compare what we do to what another nation does because, quite simply, we should be better.

From what I have read in MadA'a post, we do operate at a higher standard, there has been nothing like this in Iraq or Afghanistan, or any war since the Indian Wars.


ashura, when every post by SpAM is nothing but a endless propaganda attack on the U.S. as the evil in the world, isn't it permissible to look at SpAM's country, the person who is doing the attacking, and ask the same question's, why isn't she doing more to clean up her own country's atrocities? It seems SpAM has more than enough to keep her busy cleaning up India with out worrying about the U.S. India's suppose to be the biggest democracy in the world, it also seems to be the biggest violator of human rights in the Free world.

But yet she sits safe at her daddies home and make endless attacks about America, I wonder what would happen to Her if she got her ass out on the streets and started to do something about the mess in her own back yard, or is it safer to attack the U.S. because she knows that she can do so with impunity? at home she just might end up in jail? at the Least? or worse?

So SpAM sits in daddies home and does nothing, but point fingers at everybody but India because it is safer for her precious little butt to do so, and she feels like she is doing something.

 

[Gustav]

as the pre-eminent member and representative of the aryan defence caucus in sciforums
i take issue with these false accusations
you barbarians are hopeless
animals

 

[Gustav]

naya zindagee
naya jeevan

fools

 

[S.A.M.]

as the pre-eminent member and representative of the aryan defence caucus in sciforums
i take issue with these false accusations
you barbarians are hopeless
animals

You're Indian!

Please tell me you are ABCD

 

[Gustav]

And I still disagree with using that tactic as a response to criticism. The point you're trying to make is "Hey, we could be a lot worse."

so wonderfully childlike ja?
my fellow americans glow with pride at the ability to nuke anyone at the drop of a hat

the fuckers are renowned for hypocrisy

 

[milkweed]

You dont want to be a widow in India either.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/asiapcf/07/05/damon.india.widows/index.html