Amritsar Sahib: While addressing a press conference the pro-freedom group Dal Khalsa stated that Indian security forces and police continue to violate Sikh human rights, the Dal Khalsa announced that the party would organise a protest march and sit-in at Gurdaspur on December 10 to mark the 69th World Human Rights Day.
Dal Khalsa Activists during a press conference.
Party’s youth leader and general secretary Paramjit Singh said the march would lend voice to the victims of state repression, especially those who were made to disappear and subsequently eliminated in a stage-managed encounter.
Elaborating agenda in detail for protest he said it would be against torture, Fake Encounters, enforced Disappearances, Impunity to forces and Black Laws. He pointed out that during the last one year, under one pretext or another but ostensibly with the same-old reason of curbing militancy in Punjab, there have been a string of arrests. The youth are still picking up arms as the issues that led to what came to be known as the Punjab problem still persist.
The state of Punjab continues to reel under custodial torture, illegal detentions, harassment and long confinement in jails under archaic laws. The chief minister Amarinder Singh instead of enacting more stringent laws and curbing freedom of expression should press upon the Indian establishment to find out political resolution to the Punjab conflict.
Party spokesperson Kanwar Pal Singh questioned the international community and the Indian civil society on absence of justice in India. He asked, “We have a poser to the UN. The ‘Butcher of Bosnia’ has been punished, when will the ‘Butchers of Sikhs’ be held guilty for attempted Genocide?”
He said his party’s Europe chapter would submit the memo to United Nations Geneva office in this regard in Dec.