The uproar caused by the preventive detention of Feroz Mithiborwals, Kishore Jagtap and Aslam Ghazi should grow louder and focus on India’s deplorable record of human rights violations.
It is hard to believe that India is one of the few countries in the world whose Constitution allows for preventive detention during peacetime without safeguards that elsewhere are understood to be basic requirements for protecting fundamental human rights . India has so many laws that cannot stand the scrutiny of a liberal democratic constitution. There is an UN Convention against Torture [CAT] and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This convention is in place for the last over 20 years. India took a decade to sign it. In its 30th year India was among only six nations who had failed to ratify it. This, in spite of numerous appeals and petitions sent to our Prime Minister by Human Rights groups. There is an International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights [ICCPR]. India has ratified it. Still the recently amended UAPA [Unlawful Activities Prevention Act], in Soli Sorabjee’s opinion, is inconsistent with that International Covenant. Lord Meghnad Desai has called this law blatant violation of human rights. He says it cannot survive a PIL that challenges its violation of human rights. Our statute-book needs lots of cleansing.
Let us hope that the voices of protest which have risen amplify into a movement which fights for scrapping of all anti-people laws and prevent their enactment. India should be a beacon of Human Rights and Civil Liberty.