DEHRA DUN: Issues of the Northeast were eclipsed at a much-hyped workshop deemed to focus on the human rights of marginalised and tribal communities held here in the first week of October. The Northeast could not have fared worse.
Activists of the Naga People's Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR), the only rights activists from the Northeast, had to return without even uttering a single word at the workshop. A journalist who tried to raise the issue of how difficult it is for both human rights activists and journalists to work in counter-insurgency areas was not allowed to criticise the mainstream Indian media. The same journalist who tried to speak about the fallacies of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act was cut short. The request for passing a resolution on the Luingam Luithui episode too went unheeded.
The workshop in question was a three-day event organised by the Dehra Dun-based Rural Litigation and Entitlement Kendra (RLEK) from October 1. The workshop was co-sponsored by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) and the International Working Group on Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA). The workshop was inaugurated by the NHRC chairman, Justice MN Venkatachaliah. The valedictory session was addressed by the first chairman of the NHRC, Justice Ranganath Misra.
The Northeast, it seemed to those concerned about the region, did not matter to the rest of India. Though human rights activists from the Northeast have time and again made themselves heard and taken cognisance of at many a seminar/workshop/conference earlier, this meet was different. Many delegates felt it was hijacked by people who were obsessed with marginalised communities and indigenous peoples from their own areas and were blissfully ignorant of what was happening in the Northeast.
The only delegate from the Northeast who was not interrupted or nipped in the bud from speaking was Jeuti Baruah of the Law Research Institute, Guwahati. Baruah spoke "Human rights of the tribal people in the hill areas of Northeast". Baruah, whose presentation emphasised on the anthropological and sociological aspects on tribals not yet being granted the status of indigenous peoples, however, had to start off by showing a map of India indicating where Northeast was. A rights activists later commented, "Baruah had to do that because people still don't know where the Northeast is!"
The two representatives of the NPMHR, Nepuni Piku and Akum Longchari, left the workshop even before the proceedings had drawn to a close. "We are leaving because we found that there was no space for us," Piku told this correspondent before making his exit. Said a disenchanted Piku, "We are also here to contribute and participate. We are not here to listen all the time. Here you have a workshop on human rights of tribal and marginalised communities, but they are not even willing to give the chance to people who are actually aggrieved and victimised tribals themselves."
Said a participant, "The problem with the workshop was that it was seemingly obsessed with communities from North India. The Van Gujjars were allowed and, in fact, invited to speak over and over again at each of the sessions, while the rest were accorded precious little time or rudely cut short when they tried to talk about issues for which they had come all the way to Dehra Dun. While it is true that the Van Gujjars have indeed been a harassed and persecuted community, it is unfair to assume that the rights violations of communities, particularly in insurgency areas, don't mean a fig."
Another delegate agreed and said, "It is rather sad if the rights of communities of the heartland are held to be more vital than those elsewhere. This conference was different in another way - most of the sessions were chaired and/or dominated by jurists whose ways of looking at human rights issues is obviously different from human rights activists."
At the session on the role of the media, this correspondent tried to speak on the difficulties facing both journalists and human rights activists in insurgency areas. This speaker who was severely critical about the reportage of human rights violations (of the Northeast) in the mainstream Indian newspapers was rudely and brusquely asked not to talk about the issue by the chair for the session, Harish Chandola, a journalist with The Hindustan Times. Chandola said, "We are not here to talk about ourselves. We are here to talk about them (Van Gujjars)."
When this same journalist had raised the issue of the ineffectiveness of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act at the session on potential violators of human rights, he was asked to get his facts right by the chair, former chief justice, JS Verma. What this journalist had meant to ask the panelists was about the alleged human rights violations by the Army in insurgency areas, since the panelists had mainly talked only about the police in non-insurgency areas. What Justice Verma thought was that this correspondent was challenging the judgment passed by him on the Act. The point that got lost in the bargain was that in spite of Verma's judgment, rights violations have been taking place in the Northeast with impunity.
Among those who attended the conference were the Assam Human Rights Commission chairman, justice SN Bhargava, the West Bengal Human Rights Commission chairman, justice Mukul Gopal Mukherjee, former NHRC member, justice VS Malimath.
[To be fair to RLEK, the workshop was fairly well-organised by both its chairman Avdhash Kaushal and the workshop coordinator Nagaraj Sabapathy. It was no fault of their's that the majority marginalised overshadowed the minority marginalised]
