The Clinton administration has criticised Indias human rights record, particularly in Kashmir, alleging that there continue to be significant human rights abuses, despite extensive constitutional and statutory safeguards.
The state departments annual report on human rights, released here yesterday, blames both the government and militants for this state of affairs in the country.
It says that many of these abuses are generated by intense social tensions, violent secessionist movements and authorities attempts to repress them and deficient police methods and training.
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These problems are acute in Kashmir, where judicial system has been disrupted by terrorist threats, including the assassination of judges and witnesses, by judicial tolerance of the governments heavy handed anti-militant tactics and by the refusal of security forces to obey court orders, it adds.
The report which the administration sends to Congress every year, notes that a decrease in abuses by security forces in Kashmir coincided with increased abuses by pro-government counter-militants.
It contains a long list of serious human rights abuses in India.
These include, extra-judicial executions and other political killings and excessive use of force by security forces. Tortures, rape, and deaths of suspects in police custody throughout the country, poor prison conditions, arbitrary arrest and incommunicated detention in Kashmir and the north-east, continued detention throughout the country of thousands of arrested under special security legislation, prolonged detention while under trial, widespread inter-caste and communal violence, legal and societal discrimination as well as extensive violence, both societal and by police and other agents of government against women.
During 1996, the report acknowledges that India made further progress in resolving human rights problems. In Punjab, serious abuses of the early 1990s were acknowledged and condemned by the Supreme Court.
It says separatist militants were responsible for numerous serious human rights abuses, including extra-judicial and other political killings, torture and brutality.
Separatist militants were also responsible for kidnapping and extortion in Kashmir and north-east India, the report says.
The US government document says that insurgency-related deaths were at the same level as last year in Kashmir. Although the proportion of civilian deaths increased slightly, apparently due to militant efforts to prevent elections and disrupt the new-elected government in the state.
It says that political killings by government forces, including deaths in custody and faked encounter killings continued at a high level in the state of Jammu and Kashmir and the seven north-eastern states. Security forces committed between 100 to 200 extra-judicial killings of suspected militants in Kashmir, the report alleges.
The report says that killings and abduction of suspected militants and other persons by pro-government counter-militants emerged as a significant pattern in Kashmir.
In Punjab, the pattern of disappearances prevalent in the early 1990s appears to be at an end. But hundreds of police and security officials have not been held accountable for serious human rights abuses committed during the counter-insurgency of 1984-94, it adds. It also records a substantial increase in killings by naxalites after August in Andhra Pradesh and at a lesser level in Bihar Orissa and West Bengal. They dispensed summary justice in peoples courts which in some cases condemned to death of suspected police informers, village headmen and others as class enemies and caste oppressors.
The report also takes note of the steps that the government of India has taken over the years to rectify the situation.
It says visits by international human rights groups, as well as continuing International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) prison visits in Kashmir demonstrated increased transparency on human rights problems.
It says the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) continued to enlarge its useful role in addressing patterns of abuse as well as specific abuses.
The NHRC helped foster human rights education among the police and security forces and advanced its programee of human rights education in the schools.