Atrocities still on, no lesson learnt: Panel

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, April 2

Independent People’s Tribunal (IPT), a platform established by various human rights organisations, advocated the setting up of an “independent truth commission” to consider cases of extra-judicial executions and forced disappearances.

The tribunal wrapped up its two-day hearing of the victim families who lost their dear ones during the militancy period in Punjab.

An expert panel comprising former Supreme Court judge Justice AK Ganguly; Soni Sori, human rights activist, Chhattisgarh; Colin Gonsalves, senior advocate; Babloo Loitongbam, activist, Manipur; Paramjit Kaur Khalra, Khalra Mission Organisation; Kavita Srivastava from Rajasthan; Tapan Bose, secretary general, South Asia Forum for Human Rights; and Parveena Ahangar, Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons, Kashmir; observed that the attendance of over 700 people showed how important this issue was to the victims and people of Punjab.

The killings exposed in Jaswant Singh Khalra’s “mass cremation case” as well as thousands of other cases across Punjab, needed to be properly and independently examined, it maintained.

The panel stated that the entire country was witnessing such atrocities on a wide scale and needed the same processes of truth, justice, reparation and non-repetition. The present conflicts and brutalities in other states showed that the lessons were not learnt from Punjab, it observed.