Terror Cannot Fight Terror
An Editorial in Khaleej Times
May 24 2008
The Jaipur bomb blasts, which claimed 66 precious lives, are a horrible reminder of how vulnerable Indian citizens remain to the depredations of fanatics who consider mass murder a legitimate means to further political goals. Police and intelligence agencies haven't so far been identified the crime's perpetrators.
It isn't clear if the motive was to ignite communal strife, or sabotage the India-Pakistan peace process, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh alleged. But the blasts need a rational, cool-headed, resolute and united response.
However, the Bharatiya Janata Party, which rules in Rajasthan, has politicised the issue to polarise opinion. It has tried to cover up its police's ineptitude by accusing the Congress of being "soft" on terrorism.
This is doublespeak. The BJP said for four years that terrorists were striking at Congress-ruled states, but not at Gujarat-thanks to Narendra Modi's "tough administration". Yet, the BJP is speechless at Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje's statement that she won't allow Rajasthan to become a "Gujarat"-through anti-Muslim violence.
Raje claims the culprits have "external links", but the men haven't even been identified. After accusing the Centre of asking her to create a "Guantanamo Bay" by detaining Bangladeshis, she's arbitrarily rounding up scores of Bengali-speakers, many from West Bengal, for "infiltration".
Their demonisation is similar to the abuse ("asylum-seekers") that poor South Asian migrants face from Western xenophobes. The BJP attributes political motives to people who migrate for survival from a dirt-poor to a slightly less poor society. They deserve compassion, not hatred.
The BJP is clamouring for an anti-terror law like the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1985, or its nationally aborted successor, Prevention of Terrorism Act. It also wants a special federal agency created to deal with terrorism.
The BJP demands a "hard state", which would practise maximal violence against terrorists. Some retired police and intelligence officials also advocate tit-for-tat approaches to terrorism-even if this means blatant human rights violations.
They contend that terrorism has now entered a particularly malicious phase. It can only be fought if the state wages all-out war and resorts to intrusive surveillance and allows preventive detention, reverses the burden of proof, and admits confessions to the police as evidence.
These arguments are silly knee-jerk reactions to Jaipur. The cures they propose are worse than the disease.
To start with, the utility of a harsh law will at best be limited to punishing, not preventing, terrorism. It's unlikely to deter suicide-bombers. A law is no good if its enforcers are incompetent, corrupt or both.
Regrettably, that's true of much of South Asia's police, in which recruitment involves hefty bribes. The police routinely violates its own procedures-for example, writing station diaries in serial order in tamper-proof ink. It rarely exercises care even in investigating ordinary crimes-witness the Noida murder case.
India already has countless surveillance measures, including roadblocks, metal detectors and closed-circuit TV cameras at airports, train/bus stations and offices, besides identity documents with a huge amount of personal information. But these aren't used intelligently.
India has unacceptably intrusive electronic surveillance. All Internet service-providers and cellphone operators must maintain transaction records for three years. The government can tap all e-mail conversations.
This hasn't produced useful clues to terrorism. But malice, mistaken identities or incompetence has resulted in innocent people being jailed for months-like journalist Iftikhar Geelani and IT professional, Lakshmana Kailash.
Surveillance has limited use. Britain has nearly 5 million CCTV cameras. London alone has over half a million.
The average citizen is daily tracked by some 300 cameras. Yet, these yielded no warning of or clues to the July 2005 bombings. Cameras have helped solve less than 3 per cent of street robberies.
Take the "special" anti-terrorism law the BJP demands. Any law that routinely allows preventive detention violates the fundamental principle that nobody should be deprived of liberty unless held guilty by a court of law.
Detaining suspects for months should be repugnant to a civilised legal system. Such colonial laws have created huge popular discontent in Kashmir and India's Northeast. They must be repealed, not replicated.
Similarly, inverting the burden of proof violates a basic tenet of the legal system:, an accused must be considered innocent until proved guilty, however grave the crime. The demand that confessions to a police officer must become evidence is misguided. Confessions can be extracted under duress, sometimes torture.
They cannot have evidentiary value in a credible legal system. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits such obnoxious practices.
It's simply wrong to contend that India doesn't have laws to deal adequately with terrorism. It does. The police want still tougher laws because they can detain suspects indefinitely without doing their job of gathering evidence and building a strong prosecution case. They can also harass people against whom they nurture prejudice.
The TADA story is horrifying. Some 67,000 people were arrested under it, but only 8,000 put on trial, and a mere 725 convicted. Official committees found the law's application untenable in all but 5,000 cases. Under TADA, religious minorities were selectively targeted.
For instance, in Rajasthan, of 115 TADA detainees, 112 were Muslims and 3 Sikhs. Gujarat had an even worse pattern under POTA: all but one of the 200-plus detainees were Muslims, the remaining one a Sikh.
Nor is a federal anti-terrorism agency a magic wand. Besides, many states, including NDA-ruled Bihar, oppose it.
Talk of waging war on terror is dangerous — witness the US's global war on terror. Since 2001, it has caused a sevenfold increase in terrorism globally and implanted religion-driven extremism where it didn't exist (Iraq). GWoT has entailed enormous human rights violations, with Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, and harassment of thousands of US citizens too.
In the last four years, US immigration authorities have detained over a million people, including 311,312 last year alone, creating an "American Gulag".
That's not the way India should go. Terrorism can only be fought if we improve our policing, revamp intelligence agencies, and respect human rights. There's no militarist shortcut to fighting terror.
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-terrorism-jihad/terror-fight-terror/d/29