Medical, legal aid denied to PSA detainees in Kashmir: US State Dept
The detainees under Public Safety Act (PSA) in Jammu and Kashmir were denied medical attention and access to lawyers by law enforcing agencies and that the police routinely used the arbitrary detention, the US State Department said in a report.
“Detainees are allowed access to a lawyer during interrogation, but police in Jammu and Kashmir routinely employed arbitrary detention and denied detainees, particularly the destitute, access to lawyers and medical attention,” the State department said in its ‘Executive Summary’ of ‘India 2014 Human Rights Report,’ released in the last week of June.
The 68-page document said the controversial PSA, which applies only in Jammu and Kashmir, “permits state authorities to detain persons without charge or judicial review for as long as two years without visitation from family members.”
The report compiled by Bureau of Democracy, Human rights and labor, while citing Non-Governmental Organisations, said Jammu and Kashmir government held political prisoners and temporarily detained more than 690 persons characterized as “terrorists, insurgents, and separatists under the Public Safety Act between 2005 and 2014.”
It also said that in Indian states of Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and Manipur, security officials have special authorities to search and arrest without a warrant.
Quoting South Asia Terrorism Portal data-base, it said that 193 fatalities were reported in Jammu Kashmir during the year (2014)–51 forces persons, 32 civilians, and 110 militants.
Referring to freedom of assembly or public meeting, the report said local governments in India generally respect the right to protest peacefully except in Jammu and Kashmir. “State [J&K] government sometimes denied permits to separatist political parties for public gatherings, and security forces sometimes detained and assaulted members of political groups engaged in peaceful protest,” it said.
“During periods of civil unrest in Jammu and Kashmir, authorities used the criminal procedure code to ban public assemblies or impose a curfew,” the report noted.
In March this year, global human rights watch, Amnesty International had said that the estimated number of people detained under the PSA since 1991 range from 8,000-20,000.
In March 2011, Amnesty International published the report ‘A Lawless Law’ on administrative detentions under the PSA, documenting the various ways in which the use of the PSA violated international law.
In July 2012, Amnesty International published another report ‘Still a ‘Lawless Law’’ which outlined how, despite legal and policy developments, key human rights concerns with the PSA and its application remain unchanged.
AI’s research has showed that the implementation of the PSA is often arbitrary and abusive, with many of those being held having committed no recognisably criminal acts.
“The PSA’s vague and over-broad provisions facilitate a range of human rights violations in practice,” AI had maintained.
Those held under the PSA can face up to two years in detention without a trial.
“But the Jammu and Kashmir authorities consistently thwart court orders for the release of improperly detained individuals by issuing successive detention orders,” it had said.
“Many detainees are thus trapped in a cycle of detention and remain, in the words of high-ranking officials, out of circulation.”
The Supreme Court has described administrative detention, including the PSA, as ‘lawless law’.
AI cited Vice-President Hamid Ansari’s statement in November 2014, where he had said that the use of laws like the PSA to commit human rights violations “reflects poorly on the State and its agents”.
“The UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders has stated that laws like the PSA allow the state to wrongfully target human rights defenders, and called for the repeal of the law,” it had added.
The report also said that citizens from Jammu and Kashmir faced extended delays, sometimes as long as two years, for issuance or renewal of passports.
“The government subjected applicants born in Jammu and Kashmir–including children born to military officers deployed in the state–to additional scrutiny and police clearances before issuing them passports,” the report said.
Citing an example of Zahoor Ahmad Mir, younger brother of former militant, it said, the state government of Jammu and Kashmir repeatedly denied a passport to him.
“The state government denied Mir a passport for the third time in October after his passport application had been pending for three years,” it said, adding that the state government maintained that it does not prevent the right to travel of family members of former insurgents.
The report said that the office of former J&K Chief Minister Omar Abdullah maintained that 95 percent of pending passport applications were cleared.
The then state’s Political secretary, Tanvir Sadiq, stated that in the past three years, three million passport applications were processed or disposed of and that between the months of July and November, more than 5,000 adverse cases were reviewed and cleared, it added.
