The Indian Army respects human rights

The Indian Army is in a Catch-22 situation in areas where the Armed Forces Special Powers Act is in force. The Act – generally known by its acronym, the AFSPA – gives the Army the requisite legal protection to fight militancy in Jammu & Kashmir and many states of the North East.

However, for human rights groups, the AFSPA is a symbol of the State’s record on human rights, abysmal by their standards. The AFSPA, according to them severely impede the protection of human rights in these areas. In this continuous debate between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ the Army comes a cropper, however simplistic the thesis of the rights groups be.

Thus, it is pertinent to speak of all the actions that the Indian Army takes in the preservation of human rights.

In fact, the Indian army is in the forefront of implementing various human rights provisions extant in international covenants and our constitution. Since human dignity and rights are inalienable elements of a human being’s existence, it is important that they are implemented in right earnest at all times.

The human rights framework in the world is currently governed by the various provisions of the United Nations. The main international treaties and covenants are the United Nations charter and the declaration of human rights from which flows the various provisions in our constitution. The cornerstone of the world human rights movement was the evolution of the Geneva conventions and their application in the Second World War onwards in various degrees in the conflicts amongst the nations.

Now, to discuss the main issues that are the cornerstone of the Indian army ethos, which need to be deliberated upon in the light of the concern shown by the international community and our founding fathers towards the human rights of all human beings.

The insurgency situation puts a heavy responsibility on the army to ensure that the basic fabric of the fundamental rights is not torn upon while discharging its duties. Article 21 of the Constitution states that ‘no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except in accordance with the procedure established by law’. This being the avowed aim of the founding fathers, the army has made it the cornerstone of its policy that no Indian citizen be unduly harassed or his liberty restrained without resorting to the due process of law.

In case of an arrest, the Army tries to ensure that the liberty of the individual is guaranteed through the prompt handing over of the accused or suspect to the civil police and ensuring that the individual is produced in the court at earliest. In no circumstance is the Army allowed to resort to preventive or illegal detention. The command structure is always sensitive to this provision and various checks and balances at various levels are instituted to ensure that the liberty of the individual is not deprived due to the operational constraints.

The feather in the cap of the Indian army was the 1971 Indo -Pak war and the resultant exchange of the prisoners of wars between the two nations. The issue to be mulled over are the fact that the prisoners were treated in consonance with the Geneva conventions and there was no digression from the laid down principles. The Indian army played a stellar role managing the prisoners of war while enforcing the prisoners’s rights under the Convention.

On the other hand, the recent Kargil intrusion although put the Pakistan army in the category of a ‘worst case” of infringement of human rights and the treatment meted out to the Indian Prisoners of War was nothing short of barbaric and simply unacceptable to the standards laid down in the Geneva conventions. The dismemberment of the bodies of Indian soldiers and the torture meted out to them must have made all right thinking and humane individuals to hang their heads in shame.

This in sharp contrast to the military funeral given to the disowned soldiers of Pakistan army. Thus events are testimony to the wonderful and honourable record of the Indian Army as the guardian and protector of the human rights and the spirit of our founding fathers in the constitution of India.

The Indian army is always ready to walk into the future with its head held high and with the pride of keeping the flame of human rights movement alive in the organisation. The Indian army is an army which deals al the situations internal and external both with a concern that always will ensure that Auschwitz and Abu Ghraib are mere historical events or landmarks that are a blot on the human rights movement and one needs to derive suitable lessons from them to have the “discipline of looking always at what is to be seen” in the correct perspective.

(The views expressed in the article are that of the author and do not represent the views of the editorial committee or the centre for land warfare studies).