Fighting fire with fire

History has proved that putting up resistance or vigilante groups that are not trained properly and are poorly disciplined leads to human rights violations on the local population, writes Doel Mukerjee.

On December 23, 1994, Gram Raksha Dals were set up in Bundu village in Keredari police station of Hazaribagh district, in Jharkhand. This unarmed Dal was supported by the administration. On January 14, 1995, the MCC attacked and killed six members of the Raksha Dal along with a head constable. Again on May 23, 1995, in Salga village five people lost their lives; several such incidents have taken place in this block and this has only been viewed as a local effort to tackle Naxalism. At present, the Salwa Judum or the ‘peace campaign’ in Chhattisgarh is along the lines of Gram Suraksha Samitis or village defence committees, where the government provides support to the indigenous population to fight the Naxals when they enter their villages. Presently, the government says it has suspended its activities, but has warned that the movement will be back with a vengeance in spite of the terrible loss of lives over the last few months.

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The setting up of the Raksha Dals has had little impact on curbing Naxal violence or lessening the threat. It is against all international norms to use civilian populations to fight internal conflicts since the primary duty of the state is to protect people’s lives and not to use them as pawns to fight a battle. It is also against International Humanitarian Law, the general principles of protection under common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention and specific rules of engagement in Additional Protocol II. After a series of attacks on Raksha Dal members, the Jharkhand government has indefinitely stopped arming the community, yet the central government in its Security Related Expenditure (SRE) Scheme sees value in financing and promoting just that. Nonetheless, the villagers are provided adequate security cover and the area is effectively dominated by the security forces. For all this effort, the central government will reimburse 100 per cent of the expenditure on various schemes; lump sum grants will also be made to the state to set up village defence committees.

The question that arises is, whether the people joining these initiatives are at all aware of the larger designs of the government or whether they want to get rid of violence the way the government wants it. Are the communities mentally or physically equipped to take on their own people who are asking for access and rights to their land, forests, water, and above all, the right to live with dignity? There is a definite need to prepare a policy to tackle internal discontent and violence taking into account the social and economic requirements of the area. The present campaign in Chhattisgarh’s six blocks of Dantewada has left 46,000 people displaced in 27 state-run camps, 167 Salwa Judum activists killed, 200 police personnel dead and 400 activists and security personnel injured. All this when the state has spent a fortune to prevent 4,000 hardcore Naxalites from operating with the 40,000-odd militia and sympathisers. But what has become more definite is that whether it is in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh or any of the other nine states, there is no common policy to deal with an internal conflict situation.

A lot of emphasis is being laid on firefighting strategies by using unsuspecting civilians to tackle AK56-wielding Naxals. In the Eighties, the Madhya Pradesh police had appointed Raksha Dal members and provided them with arms licences to tackle dacoits. Some of these Raksha Dals instead took to extorting money from the people while others became vigilantes killing dacoits and anti-social elements. The Raksha Dals executed people without questioning, making them a ready alibi to protect police misdeeds. Gradually, the community completely lost faith in them and the police found them too difficult to handle. So the cards issued to them were allowed to expire. There were similar experiences in other jurisdictions too. The closest example is that of Nepal, where the government armed and trained citizen defence units to contain the Maoists, which unleashed terror in and around the villages and resorted to killing, injuring and raping innocent unarmed civilians.

History has proved that putting up resistance or vigilante groups that are not trained properly and are poorly disciplined leads to human rights violations on the local population. It leaves the common people in fear of the security agencies, the Suraksha Dals and the Naxals, while all three groups enjoy impunity. Under international conventions both state and non-state actors have to respect the people who do not take a direct part in hostilities. They are to be protected in all circumstances and treated humanely without any adverse distinction, and are entitled to their moral and physical integrity. Also, in armed conflicts it is the obligation of the state to ensure that a judicial process pronounces judgment to carry out executions and sentences. The rule of law is subverted if village defence committees are used to counter Naxals and mete out justice. The central government immediately needs to review its strategy and bring in more holistic measures to weed out such undemocratic concepts and instead curtail insurgency through constitutional means.