WHY INDIA IS UNFIT TO
GET UN VETO POWER BY
MOHAMMAD ZAINAL
ABEDIN:
ASSALAM-O-ALAIKUM!
The
South Asian nations surrounding India had a sigh of relief when United States
of America, Russian Federation and China, the three permanent members of UN
Security Council (UNSC), technically deterred India’s dream to get UNSC
membership, as they declined a proposal to reform UN Security Council what
could ultimately pave the way for India to enter such prestigious and powerful
body having veto power. India’s neighbors apprehend if India gets veto power it
will use it not only to squeeze them, but also to occupy them to implement its
dream of so-called ‘Akhand Bharat’ initially merging those countries to India
what slipped away from it in 1947. After its recent setback Indian policymakers
dismayingly recalled American President Mr. Barak Obama who in 2010 asserted
that India deserves a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.
But the analysts believe Obama honoring diplomatic courtesy and strategic
policy intentionally overlooked or avoided the irritable realities and traumas
that India suffers from since its inception.
The
ground reality says India practically lacks in all the counts get UNSC
permanent membership. India will have to go a long way before it gets such
position. None of the India’s neighboring countries will sincerely welcome
Indian admission in UNSC, as India poses, as if, she is their guardian.
India must remove such apprehension from psyche of its neighbors by shunning
its so-called dream of Akhand Bharat. Such dream prompts Indian policymakers to
wage a policy of disturbing, squeezing¸ controlling and even, if possible,
occupying them. With that end in view India creates stooges and agents, even
secessionists, in her neighboring countries to create political and religious
unrest to keep them economically shattered and backward, socially chaotic and
restive, psychologically weak and insecure, and above all, nationally shaky and
divided. None of its neighbors are harmonious with India, whose support
is very crucial for it in getting the support of all the veto-powered nations
of UN. Though India is not fit to get veto power, still for a long time India
desperately bids to get it simply highlighting one ground that out every six of
the global people one is an Indian. But the knowledgeable sources believe if
those regions that were immorally and illegally merged to Indian territory
(through occupation or conspiratorial integration), are segregated from India,
not only its geographical size, but also its demographic volume will shrink to
a great extent. On the other hand simply huge population cannot be a factor in
attaining the Security Council membership.
Indians
to brand as so-called super power and hence to enter UNSC also distantly
point to their extravagant military muscle as another factor, but such military
might is, in fact, a burden for India, as it eats up vitals of India earns
negative image wherever its personnel were deployed inside (disturbed areas) or
outside India (in Bangladesh or Sri Lanka). India is the lone country in the
world whose army is engaged in a never-ending war against its own people since
its inception in 1947. India nurses such mega-army keeping its millions of
marginal people in distressed who live in urban slums or in thatched huts in
remote areas who are constantly chased by starvation, malnutrition, disease,
illiteracy, and social or caste hatred and persecution. The most serious factor
that makes India unfit to get UNSC permanent membership is that India lags far
behind in all sectors from the current veto-powered members. India is even
poorer than those aspirants (Japan, Germany, Brazil, or Africa) for the same
position in UNSC. India is widely infamous for its poor economy, illiteracy,
communal riots and caste hatred, religious and social violence, poor human
rights records, and above all, its expansionist policy of ‘Akhand Bharat’
abolishing the existence of its neighboring countries.
Uncovering
India’s poor and lowly position, a BBC report says, “Seventy-five percent of
India's population lives in rural poverty, which results in a stagnated economy
----. A typical farmer feeds and clothes a family of four on $2 per day.
---poverty drives many farmers to suicide. Typical villages lack basic
services, communications and infrastructure, resulting in a stagnated rural
economy -----.”
Mumbai,
the so-called dazzling city, is home to 22 million people, and over 70% of them
live in slums. In recent times though some of the slum people were removed, but
the position remains unchanged. People living in the slums have limited access
to electricity, clean water, food, and educational opportunities. The slums are
also home to over seven million children under the age of 14 who are growing up
in abject poverty. Young as five and six years old are forced to work for
survival. Slum children work as rag pickers, sewerage cleaners and other menial
jobs all around Mumbai, earning a few cents a month for their families.
Majority people of India are so poor that they are deprived of so many modern
facilities. Dean Spears, an economist and visiting researcher at the Delhi
School of Economics, writes, in India “Open defecation is everybody's problem.
It is the quintessential 'public bad' with negative spillover effects even on
households that do not practice it.”
A
new World Health Organization (WHO) report says more than half a billion people
in India still “continue to defecate in gutters, behind bushes or in open water
bodies, with no dignity or privacy”. They are among the 48% of Indians who do
not have access to proper sanitation.
India
is estimated to have one third of the world’s poor. India’s Integrated Child
Development Services (ICDS) need to undergo significant changes to address the
current malnutrition crisis in India, according to a World Bank report. The
prevalence of underweight children in India is among the highest in the world,
and is nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa, the report
says. Globally, an estimated one in four children under age 5 suffer from
stunting, a form of malnutrition in which children are shorter than normal
growth for their age. In India, almost 62 million children (48 percent) across
all income groups are stunted. Stunting, or chronic malnutrition, is
accompanied by a host of problems—weak immune systems, risk of sickness and
disease, arrested cognitive and physical development, and a greater risk of
dying before age 5. India has 287 million illiterate adults, the largest
population globally and 37% of the world total, says a report by U.N.
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, also known as
UNESCO. In India there prevail huge disparities between the rich and
the poor in all sectors from education to healthcare.
According
to government statistics on an average 44,000 women still die every year at the
time of delivery. Health Minister J P Nadda on March 17, 2015 informed the
Rajya Sabha in a written reply that as per Sample Registration System (SRS)
2013, the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) in the country is 40 per 1000 live births
which translates into death of an estimated 10.68 lakh children up to the age
of one year annually (http://www.outlookindia.com/news/article/Maternal-Mortality-Ratio-on-Decline-Since-2007-Govt/886273) The problem of
gender-based violence is getting worse in India. National Crime Record Bureau
statistics show crimes against women increased by 7.1 percent
nationwide since 2010. There has been a rise in the number of incidents of
rape recorded too. 24,206 incidents of rape were recorded in 2011, a rise of 9
percent from the previous year. More than half of the victims are
between 18 and 30 years of age.
Figures
indicate that 10.6 percent of total victims of rape were girls under 14
years of age, while 19 percent were teens between the ages of 14 and
18. Under the IPC (Indian Penal Code) crimes against women include rape,
kidnapping and abduction, homicide for dowry, torture, molestation, sexual
harassment, and the importation of girls. A total of 2,28,650 incidents of
crimes against women were reported in India during 2011.
India
claims itself as the largest democracy where in reality there is no democratic
practice. Its democracy is confined to holding election. There is no democracy
in those regions whose people strongly believe that they don’t belong to India,
where people are socially discriminated and persecuted, economically deprived
and exploited. India also behaves with them like an occupation power. An Indian
human rights activist Henri Tiphagne acknowledged “We have all these great
human rights institutions, but still nobody in India gets justice when the
state murders one of their family members,” Same position, in the truest
sense of the term, prevails all over India, particularly in Kashmir,
Northeastern region or Maoist-infested areas that cover about 11 provinces.
The
laws that Indian parliament passed so far are utterly contrary to democratic
values and norms. Some of the infamous draconian black laws are: Armed Forces
Special Powers Act (AFSPA), Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), Unlawful
Activities (prevention) Amendment Ordinance, Indian Telegraph Act, Criminal
Procedure Code, Newspapers Incitements to Offence Act Official Secrets Act,
National Security Act, Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA), Disruptive
Areas Act, Public Safety Act, etc.Most of these laws are imposed to crush the
people of those so-called ‘disturbed areas’ where encaged and deprived people
being annoyed became desperate for liberation. Availing these laws the armed
forces can arrest, even shoot to death anyone, on suspicion or take him into
custody without a warrant.
They
can enter and search any premise in order to arrest so-called ‘wanted’ person,
or to recover arms, ammunition or explosive substances. They can stop and search
any vehicle or vessel that is suspected to be carrying wanted persons or
weapons. Availing such excuses, in many cases, Indian soldiers simply enter the
house with the intention of raping the women. Incidents of rape committed by
the Indian army are so random and intolerable that the women community in were
Manipur enraged, chagrined and agitated. Their anger went to its zenith when on
July 11, 2004 a 32-year Manipuir women, Thanglam Manorama, was lifted from her
house by the Assam Rifles personnel, raped and repeatedly shot at her vagina to
death. This cruel behavior of the Indian army made the Manipur so disturbed and
perturbed that on July 15, 2004 they stripped themselves and demonstrated in
front of the Assam Rifles Headquarters holding a banner that says, “Indian
Army rape us” and “Indian Army takes our flesh.”
Army
officers have legal immunity for their actions. There can be no prosecution,
suit or any other legal proceeding against anyone acting under most of these
laws. As a result, custodial death, death in planted encounters, death
without trial, arrest or detention on suspicion, demolition of residential
houses or prayer houses or shops, rape and molestation and so on occur daily in
India what is branded as the largest democracy in the world. Democracy in India
is seen only during elections, but it is absent from Indian social life, as
India is controlled and dictated by Indian Army and intelligence agencies,
whose personnel are above law. Under such situation Human rights in India is
alarmingly in the lowest position among the existing permanent members of the
UNSC and the aspirants that seek the same status what India hankers.
India
is a prophet of unrest and war in South Asian region. It is an aggressive
country having expansionist zeal. It deceptively occupied Sikkim; forcibly
swallowed Goa, Daman and, Diu; and illegally captured Princely State of
Junagadh, Hyderabad, Kashmir, Manipur, Tripura etc. Besides it manipulated the
British colonial power to handover without people’s consents such lands and
regions like Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, which
never were parts of India before their treacherous annexation to the British
India in 1826.
Now
India to maintain its controversial occupation on Kashmir and of Northeastern
seven sisters comprising Manipur, Tripura and Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram,
Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, wages a never-ending war since its inception in
1947 where its troops, under the cover of democratic fashion, lunches despotic
and ruthless rule. Indian military and intelligence agencies control those
areas where human rights are nakedly violated.
India
deployed about 400,000 army personnel in seven sisters who commit atrocities on
the local people availing black laws that I mentioned afore, and massively
violate human rights. No pen is enough to detail and ventilate the accurate and
exact agonies, sorrows and sufferings, deprivations and exploitations of the
ill-fated people of seven sisters that led them to the path of armed resistance
to liberate their region.
To
comprehend the gravity of atrocities in seven sisters I prefer to refer to an
iron lady Irom Chanu Sharmila, a Manipuri civil rights and political activist
and poet who is on hunger strike since November 4, 2000 demanding annulment of
the infamous AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act), a weapon responsible for
so many gruesome killings in northeast and elsewhere in India.
On
November 2, 2000, the Manipuri insurgents attacked an Assam Rifles convoy near
Malom town of Manipur. In retaliation, the troops shot at civilians at a nearby
bus-stop that left 10 civilians dead, including a 62-year old woman and an
18-year old Sinam Chandramani, who had been awarded the bravery award by the
former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Besides, as many as 42 people were dragged
out from their houses and severely beaten up by the Assam Rifle personnel.
The
brutal combing operation enraged and hurt the heart of Irom Sharmila so much
that prompted her to go on fast-to-death (hunger strike) demanding the repeal
of the AFSPA. About 15 years passed by, but Sharmila bending to India neither
ended her hunger strike till date nor her hunger strike could move so-called
the largest democracy India to withdraw its black law.The most serious
allegation that one may bring to the forefront is that India is such a country
that dishonors the UNSC, better to say United Nations. How a country that
denies UN Security Council resolution adopted on April 21, 1948 that India must
hold referendum in Kashmir under UN supervision to decide whether the people of
Kashmir want to merge to India or Pakistan. India raised the Kashmir issue
before the UN and politely welcomed the decision of holding plebiscite under UN
and committed to accept results, if it would go against its occupation. Late
Nehru who repeatedly declared to hold plebiscite didn’t honor it in his life
time who died on May 27, 1964. How such a country that dishonors the UN
Security Council resolution could desire to get permanent seat in it?
To
keep Kashmir under its occupation India maintains more than 700,000 troops
there who are committing all kinds of atrocities against the Kashmiri people.
Reliable Kashmiri sources confirmed that Kashmiris are virtually denied of all
types of human rights. Indian armed forces so far murdered more than 203,030
Kashmiris, detained 216,222 people, 110,355 kashmris were made disappeared,
116,010 homes have been demolished, leaving 123,110 widows and 207,664 orphans.
In Kashmir, there are thousands of unmarked graves, let alone the known
ones, in secret cemeteries created by the army and the police to hide their
crimes. Indian army, even police, are allowed to enjoy full freedom and
permanent immunity in committing atrocities that include, among others,
rape, murder, arson, kidnap, demolition (dwelling houses, businesses,
religious sites and what not. The killers remain uncharged and unpunished.
South
Asian analysts expressing their dismay opine how such a poor country that
suffers from acute problems and backwardness in all sectors along with lowest
human rights records should desire the most responsible and prestigious
position of the world body. They apprehend that India’s membership in UNSC will
simply turn South Asia to a permanent battle ground whenever India opts to
implement its aggressive dream of Akhand Bharat. All these realities and
records, including communal and caste violence, crime against the women and
religious minorities, above all, psyche of the South Asian people, are to be
profoundly taken into consideration before awarding UNSC membership to such a
poor and irresponsible, but occupation-hanker aggressive, at the same time
repressive country, named India.*
The
contributor: A journalist & researcher, Mohammad Zainal Abedin is
based in New York can be reached at Email: noa@agni.com.
POSTED
BY HABIB YOUSAFZAI
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