On the 70^th In­ter­na­tional Hu­man Rights Day, The World Sikh News com­mits to high­light hu­man rights, civil rights and fun­da­men­tal rights of all be­lea­guered com­mu­ni­ties, peo­ples and na­tions.

Seventy years ago, the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity in its wis­dom gave unto it­self a De­c­la­ra­tion of the Rights of Man, called the United Na­tions De­c­la­ra­tion of Hu­man Rights, with the avowed pur­pose of un­bur­den­ing the cli­mate of hate and war that was para­mount in those times.

To­day, on the 70^th In­ter­na­tional Hu­man Rights Day, the same rights so ap­pro­pri­ately cod­i­fied and the­o­ret­i­cally ac­cept­able to all hu­mankind are un­der threat by the very gov­ern­ments and their lead­ers who ac­cepted and rat­i­fied these rights.

In less than a cen­tury, the fun­da­men­tal rights of in­di­vid­u­als, the col­lec­tive com­mu­nal rights of com­mu­ni­ties, na­tions, re­gional iden­ti­ties, abo­rig­i­nals, mi­grants, mi­nori­ties, women and chil­dren are be­ing tram­pled with im­punity which puts the era be­fore the UN De­c­la­ra­tion in 1948 to shame.

“In 2048 –at the turn of the cen­tury of the UN De­c­la­ra­tion for Hu­man Rights, WSN pre­dicts that Sikhs will be at the fore­front ful­fill­ing their duty to hu­man­ity! ”

The last decade has seen a far worse rise in large scale crimes against hu­man­ity in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Sri Lanka and Myan­mar.  The most pow­er­ful coun­try on planet earth –the United States of Amer­ica has prof­fered a new ter­mi­nol­ogy of hate to the world and this has been lapped up by many ad­vanced Eu­ro­pean democ­ra­cies like France and Scan­di­na­vian coun­tries like Den­mark. France does not like any­thing re­li­gious and Den­mark wants to throw off mi­grants to an un­in­hab­ited is­land.

All the po­lit­i­cal and mil­i­tary might of the world com­bined to­gether has not been able to make the No­bel Peace Prize win­ner Ang San Sui Kyi wink an eye­lid and ac­cept that her coun­try and her mil­i­tary mas­ters are con­duct­ing the eth­nic cleans­ing and geno­cide of the Ro­hingya Mus­lims.  It is shock­ing, sur­pris­ing and dis­tress­ing that the Ro­hingya Mus­lims are be­ing thrown off like cat­tle be­tween one coun­try and an­other and the UN takes no prac­ti­cal steps to take care of these state­less res­i­dents of this heart­less world.

“To­day, in In­dia, nearly one-third of the coun­try is dy­ing for food rights, women are strug­gling to live their lives with­out re­pres­sion and op­pres­sion from men. Im­punity to se­cu­rity forces is the norm. De­spite tall claims at UN meets, tor­ture is ram­pant. ”

De­mo­c­ra­t­i­cally elected dic­ta­tors in the biggest and largest democ­ra­cies of the world are crush­ing de­mo­c­ra­tic norms. Hu­man rights de­fend­ers and me­dia per­sons are un­der at­tack more than ever be­fore.  Fear is the new weapon. Si­lence is the new method­ol­ogy of en­dorse­ment –from lynch­ing to build­ing of fear psy­chosis on the  Ram Mandir is­sue to putting a price on the head of any­one who ques­tions any pol­icy of the gov­ern­ment.

71 years ago In­dia be­came a sep­a­rate coun­try. 70 years ago, In­dia, like other coun­tries adopted the UN De­c­la­ra­tion for Hu­man Rights. To­day, nearly one-third of the coun­try is dy­ing for food rights, women are strug­gling to live their lives with­out re­pres­sion and op­pres­sion from men and chil­dren are be­tween the devil and deep sea of hav­ing child rights and no food or hav­ing no rights but a lit­tle food in the belly.  Im­punity to po­lice, para­mil­i­tary and mil­i­tary is the norm. The ju­di­cial sys­tem is over­bur­dened with work to which there seems no respite. De­spite tall claims at UN meets, tor­ture is ram­pant.

Sikhs do not see clo­sure through jus­tice for the pain and agony of 1984.  The Pun­jabi lan­guage is un­der threat from the rulers of Pun­jab it­self. Name call­ing the Sikhs in In­dia does not seem to end. The right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion of the Sikhs and Pun­jabis is con­strued as a law and or­der prob­lem.

The Dal­its in In­dia are re­minded time and again that they are not sup­posed to raise their voice for rights. Shame­lessly, in the last five years, the cow was more revered than this sec­tion of hu­man­ity.

The United Na­tions is im­po­tent to en­force the 1948 UN Se­cu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion to re­solve the is­sue of the rights of the peo­ple of Kash­mir through plebiscite, then de­sired by both In­dia and Pak­istan and en­dorsed by the UN.

The lead­er­ship of the Na­gas may have en­tered into a se­cret agree­ment be­tween them and In­dia, but their rights as Naga peo­ple are still await­ing a so­lu­tion. The Ma­nipuris still face the bay­o­net and the Armed Forces Spe­cial Pow­ers Act and now they do not have Irom Chanu Sharmila.

The very cit­i­zen­ship of a large chunk of the peo­ple of As­sam is un­der doubt as the right wing gov­ern­ment at the state and cen­tre forges ahead with the Na­tional Cit­i­zens Reg­is­ter to the detri­ment of the Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion.

State-spon­sored and state-tol­er­ated vig­i­lan­tism is the new norm. The bark­ing of the new me­dia sup­ported by the state does not leave any room for dis­sent. Any form of dis­sent –po­lit­i­cal, food of one’s choice, busi­ness of one’s choice, grow­ing crop of one’s choice, liv­ing in a par­tic­u­lar dwelling, fol­low­ing a re­li­gion, wor­ship­ping a God or God­dess –each one must fol­low the writ­ten and un­writ­ten guide­lines of the pow­ers that be.

The civil lib­er­ties move­ment in In­dia is dead. PUCL and PUDR are non-en­ti­ties. Some sem­blance of dis­sent by lawyers, stu­dent ac­tivists and a tiny sec­tion of me­dia keep the flag fly­ing against many odds and those of them who raised their voice aloud are in pris­ons.

Both the Pun­jabs on ei­ther side of the Rad­cliffe line beckon the Sikhs from In­dia and across the world. The small Sikh na­tion por­tends huge pos­si­bil­i­ties of peace in the geopol­i­tics of the re­gion if given a chance by the rab­ble rous­ing lead­ers who want to crush this right of the Sikh peo­ple.

Within Sikhdom, there is no ac­tive hu­man rights move­ment. Sikh ac­tivists have yet to ac­knowl­edge that work­ing for hu­man rights means work­ing for rights of peo­ple with whom one does not nec­es­sar­ily agree.  It must how­ever be ac­knowl­edged that a hand­ful of ac­tivists and lawyers have forced the agenda of the rights of Sikh po­lit­i­cal pris­on­ers on the dis­cus­sion table with the gov­ern­ment.

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Work­ing for rights of the Sikhs is part of the strug­gle but the Sikhs of the Ninth Mas­ter -Guru Tegh Ba­hadur need to think and reach be­yond that too. Let us care, hope and pray for all whose rights are un­der threat from who­ever, what­ever and wher­ever.

This is by no means an ex­haus­tive sum­mary of the hu­man rights sit­u­a­tion of the world. It is only a bird’s eye view.

As we cel­e­brate the 550 year cel­e­bra­tions of the First Mas­ter –Guru Nanak Sahib, Sikhs need to com­mit to reach out to more peo­ple and re­gions of the world and stand up for their rights, notwith­stand­ing the cli­mate of im­punity, in­dif­fer­ent at­ti­tude and in­ef­fi­ciency of the United Na­tions.

In 2048 –at the turn of the cen­tury of the UN De­c­la­ra­tion for Hu­man Rights, WSN pre­dicts that Sikhs will be at the fore­front ful­fill­ing their duty to hu­man­ity!