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India's BSF takes lessons

in human rights

TEKANPUR (India): Colonel David Roberts swung a hammer at a tiny nut placed on a wobbly table as he demonstrated the first lesson in human rights to his students.

The nut flew off unscathed but the splinters from the broken table lay scattered.

"It's the case of a Rambo destroying an entire village in a bid to smash the tiny nut gang," the British army veteran told the 30-odd officers from India's Border Security Force (BSF).

Roberts, an expert from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), was conducting a training programme for the paramilitary force at the BSF township of Tekanpur in central India. The course started on Monday.

He earlier used a nutcracker to show how a soldier trained in human rights could spare the village while breaking up the gang.

Training security forces in international law and human rights has assumed greater significance as insurgencies erupted across the globe during the last decade, said A.K. Mitra, director of the BSF Academy.

Mitra said Indian security forces had been engaged in "low intensity conflicts" in the Kashmir valley and the north-east.

"The continuous strain brought about by such operations have occasionally led to excesses upon a neutral but captive civil population," Mitra said.

Indian troops fighting separatist militants in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir and the north-eastern states of Assam, Tripura and Manipur have in the past been accused of violating human rights.

In Kashmir, security forces often carry out house searches in crowded civilian areas to flush out militants, resulting in shootouts, sometimes involving civilian casualties. Human rights violations by security forces also include the invasion of places of worship, in pursuit of militants sheltered there.

Nearly 20,000 people have died in the separatist insurgency in Kashmir since it erupted in 1990. The Indian government only recently allowed the ICRC to visit Kashmir.

"We find that we are being judged by Western standards of morality and virtue which in the context of Third World countries has political overtones too," said BSF Director General D.K. Arya, inaugurating the programme on Monday.

"Maybe we have sometimes reacted rashly and maybe in our anxiety to accelerate the pace of normalcy we may have not gone about in a very organised manner," Arya said.

"But even in the worst situations we have remained within the bounds of decency," he said.

Indian troops have been combing Kashmir for nearly two months now to rescue four foreigners held hostage by Moslem militants. A fifth hostage was killed early this month.

India accuses neighbouring Pakistan of training and arming Kashmiri militants, a charge that Islamabad denies.

"We are in Kashmir to contain militancy and to see that Kashmir is not overtaken by covert forces of Pakistan," Arya said, adding that an unsettled border and the class composition of the border population made the task of troops difficult.

"We are caught in a cleft stick situation created by a wily adversary who unfortunately for us has tremendous clout and outside support from religious zealots," Arya said.

Arya said the BSF had been making efforts to train its troops in the principles of human rights and international human law and the course had helped them considerably.

"In spite of extreme provocation a saturated disinformation and vilification campaign, we have been able to retain a human face," he said. "Human rights courses help us retain our sanity in very trying conditions."-Reuter