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A supercop on human
rights Human Rights and
Security Forces
The book starts with evolution of the concept of human rights at the international and national levels, beginning with the theory of Saint Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274 AD) which granted man natural dominion with regard to the use of material objects, signing of Magna Carta in 1215 AD, and takes you through the US Bill of Rights (1791) and French Declaration of Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789). It is interspersed with the contributions of theorists of the calibre of John Locke, J.J. Rousseau, and Montesquieu. The present era of HR evolution starts with the adoption of Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UHDR) by UN General Assembly in 1948. Nearer home, the Constitution of India adopted in 1950 drew liberally from the provisions of the UHRD and incorporated them as Fundamental Rights of her citizens, justiciable and enforceable through the Court of Law. This, as the author rightly bring out, is unique document in the provision of human rights. The Constitutions of Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and United States of America do not make such elaborate declarations of human rights as has been done in our Constitution. Then, where and how much have we gone wrong. This is precisely the author has endeavoured to analyse. Two chapters have been exclusively devoted to the international humanitarian laws in relation of security forces and legal regime, bringing out very exhaustively their strengths and weaknesses, and challenges these laws face in their implementation. While doing so, he has clearly pointed out the subtle difference of the impact of human rights laws when these may be accepted internationally, but not accepted globally. The chapter covering human rights enforcement at the national level is quite an eye-opener. The Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993, envisage that besides National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) at the national level, every state shall have a Human Rights Commission and every district in the country a Human Rights Court. It is surprising that some of the states have yet to set up such commissions, leave aside setting up courts dealing with human rights at the district level. The book has gone into the role played by NGOs in relation to human rights. Their role has been graded from "excellent" to "mischievous". There are certain NGOs which not only have developed vested interest in exaggerating claims of human rights violations by the state agencies, but are, in fact, the front organisations of militant outfits and other subversive groups. This observation by the author should be taken seriously by the media, which continuously look forward for a good copy for "breaking news" or for next day’s front-page splash. Dr Malik must be given full credit for his unbiased comments on his parent service, which is the police, and his parent state Haryana. He finds various internal human rights observance mechanisms operating within the Army, Border Security Force and Central Reserve Police Force, by and large quite effective on the part of their personnel. But the same is not true in the case of state police forces. A full chapter has been
dedicated to the views of some important functionaries, human rights
institutions and heads of main security forces in India. They include,
among others, Justice J.S. Verma, former Chairman NHRC, and Mr K.P.S.
Gill, ex-DGP of Punjab. Most vociferous comments are assigned to Mr
Gill, who highlighted the false dichotomy between human rights and need
of law enforcement. |
Dr
M.S. Malik, Director General of Police, Haryana, was in 2003 conferred
the degree of Ph.D on the subject covered in the book by Panjab
University. Prior to his selection in the IPS, he had served in the Army
and had actively taken part in counter-insurgency operations in Mizoram
in the late 1960s, followed by participation in the 1971 war in the
Jessore and Khulna sectors in erstwhile East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
Thus, his exposure to the security-force spectrum ranges from
functioning of an infantry foot soldier to a beat constable, whose
behaviour under typical situations affects the rights of a prisoner of
war and the man in the street, respectively.