Conference Description
A
Conference on Human Rights and Impunity: Towards Accountability in India
In the last several decades,
various regions of India
have suffered from outbreaks of massive communal violence. Characterized as
endemic and sporadic riots, or as separatist movements, the state has often
taken stringent counter-measures to quell the violence. State actors have
perpetrated human rights abuses, committing excesses under the guise of
restoring peace. Few, if at all, have been penalized to date. The impunity
enjoyed by the perpetrators of such wide-scale organized crime has raised
important questions about state accountability in the world’s largest
democracy.
This conference aims to provide a
platform for human rights activists from India
to interact with international human rights activists based in the United
States and leading academics whose work
focuses on impunity, international diplomacy, and international human
rights. The conference will focus on
human rights violations in the regions of Kashmir, Punjab
and Gujarat, and the subsequent impunity enjoyed by the
perpetrators. The workshops held during the conference will explore mechanisms
to strengthen the linkages between regional and international human rights
actors, and expand existing regional advocacy processes internationally.
The conference aims to:
- Develop a framework for coordination and solidarity
among the participating Indian actors, as well as across relevant
international human rights groups
- Understand the challenges faced at various levels by
the activists in the regions of focus in their struggles for justice for
the victims; and explore further domestic and international avenues
available to them
- Allow the sharing of expertise and tools among the
participants to formulate appropriate strategies to bring the issues to
the attention of the UN and foreign governments and courts
- Provide skills in establishing regular communication
channels with international media and learn best practices to be adopted
to provide periodic updates to the media, especially in the United
States.
This exercise will focus on the development of definite and
pragmatic steps to be undertaken in the respective campaigns for justice.
Conference Program
Sunday Nov. 16
Program
Kresge Room G2
Harvard
School of Public Health
651 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
Registration 09:00 – 09:30 AM
Welcome and Orientation 09:30 – 09:45 AM
Stephen Marks
Keynote Address 09:45 – 10:15 AM
Justice J.S. Verma,
former Chair of the NHRC
General Q&A Session
Regional Introductions 10:15 – 11:45 AM
Moderator: Balakrishnan Rajagopal
Kashmir: Parvez Imroz
Punjab: Ram Narayan
Kumar
Gujarat: Teesta Setalvad
General Q&A Session
Coffee Break 11:45 – 11:50 AM
International Human Rights Organizations: 11:50 – 1:00 PM
Moderator: Peter Rosenblum
Panelists: Smita Narula
Susannah
Sirkin
Questions by Regional
Representatives
General Q&A Session
Lunch 1:00 – 2:00 PM
Media 2:00 – 3:30 PM
Moderator: Henry Steiner
Panelists: Barbara Crossette
Siddharth Varadarajan
Shujaat Bukhari
Questions by Regional
Representatives
General Q&A Session
The United Nations and International Law 3:30 –
5:10 PM
Moderator: Jacqueline Bhabha
Panelists: Stephen Marks
Chris
Sidoti
Iftaar
Break
Panelist: John Cerone
Questions by Regional
Representatives
General Q&A Session
Coffee Break 5:10 – 5:20 PM
Reflections and Requests from Regional Activists 5:20 –
6:20 PM
Biographies of Conference Participants
Jacqueline Bhabha
Jacqueline Bhabha
is Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard
University. A graduate of Oxford
University, she is the executive director of the Harvard University Committee
on Human Rights Studies and a lecturer at Harvard Law School. From 1997 to
2001, she directed the Human Rights Program at the University
of Chicago. Prior to 1997, Bhabha was a practicing human rights lawyer in London,
and before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
Her publications include Women's Movement: Women Under
Immigration, Nationality and Refugee Law (1994), Asylum Law And Practice
in Europe and North America (1992), “Inconsistent
State Intervention
and Separated Child Asylum Seekers” (2001) and “Internationalist
Gatekeepers? The Tension Between Asylum Advocacy and Human
Rights” (2002). She is currently writing a book titled Moving Children:
Migration, Childhood and the Quest for Rights. She teaches international
human rights and refugee law.
Shujaat
Bukhari
Shujaat
Bukhari is a Srinagar-based
journalist working as The Hindu’s Special Correspondent for Jammu
and Kashmir. He has covered the conflict in the state
for the last 13 years and has witnessed major events in Kashmir’s
history. Bukhari
started his career with the local English daily, Samachar
Post, in 1989 and later worked as correspondent for Kashmir Times.
He covered the 1999 Kargil conflict between India
and Pakistan
for 72 days, the siege of the Hazratbal and Charar-e-Sharief shrines in 1993 and 1995, respectively, as
well as political events, protests, and human rights issues. Bhukari’s work has
also put him in danger. In 1995, a militant group kidnapped Bhukari
and, several times, Indian security forces have attacked him. This year, Bhukari was awarded a fellowship by St
Paul (Minnesota)
World Press Institute, along with eight other international journalists.
John Cerone
John Cerone
is Executive Director of the War Crimes Research Office at American
University’s Washington College of
Law, where he also teaches classes in human rights and humanitarian law. He has
worked as a human rights legal advisor with the United Nations Mission in
Kosovo and as a legal consultant for the International Secretariat of Amnesty
International. He has also served as Legal Advisor to the Attorney General of
Sierra Leone in negotiations with the United Nations on the establishment of
the Special Court for Sierra
Leone. Particular areas of expertise include
state accountability for the acts of non-state actors, the accountability of
intergovernmental organizations under human rights and humanitarian law, and
the human rights law applicable to trafficking in persons. Recent publications
include “Genocide in Recent International Jurisprudence” (Ethnic
Cleansing in Twentieth Century Europe, 2002).
Barbara Crossette
Barbara Crossette,
a distinguished journalist who reported developments in the United Nations (UN)
and human rights, retired in 2001, after having served as the New York Times
UN bureau chief and having reported in Canada. Previously a correspondent in South
Asia and Southeast Asia, serving as bureau
chiefs in Bangkok and New
Delhi, Crossette won the
George Polk Award for foreign reporting for her coverage of the assassination
of Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. She has
written several books on Asia and has been a member of
the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a Fulbright teaching
fellow at Punjab University
in India
(1980-81), and the 1994 Ferris Visiting Professor on Politics and the Press at Princeton
University.
Parvez
Imroz
Parvez Imroz is a human rights lawyer and civil rights activist in
Kashmir. He has initiated and led campaigns to highlight
the human rights abuses perpetrated by Indian security forces and press for
accountability in Kashmir. He is co-founder and
President of the J&K Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) that has worked to
build local alliances between Kashmiri civil society groups. Imroz is the founder and director of the Public Commission
on Human Rights (PCHR) that works extensively on the documentation of human
rights violations and the dissemination of the information through its monthly
dossier Informative Missive. The PCHR also provides free legal
assistance to the victims of human rights violations. Imroz
is also co-founder and Patron of the Association of Parents of Disappeared
Persons (APDP), which brings together hundreds of Kashmiri families whose
members have been the victims of Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances (EID).
The APDP is a collective campaigning organization that seeks truth and justice
on this human rights issue in Kashmir. Recently, in
April 2003, Imroz organized a worldwide hunger
strike, coordinated in different cities across the world, pressing for an end
to disappearances, prosecution of perpetrators, and appointment of a commission
to probe into all enforced disappearances.
Ram Narayan
Kumar
Ram Narayan
Kumar, human rights activist and writer focusing on peripheral communities in India,
has led the movement for justice and accountability in Punjab,
highlighting the abuses committed by state security forces during
counterinsurgency operations from 1984 to 1995. He is the lead author of the
recently released report, Reduced to
Ashes: The Insurgency and Human Rights in Punjab,
giving detailed case studies of over 600 cases of disappearances in Amritsar district, as well as an
analysis of impunity. In November 1984, Kumar led relief efforts for the Sikhs
of Delhi during the pogroms that followed Indira
Gandhi’s assassination. Involved in diverse human rights issues, from prison
reform to relief for victims of the Bhopal
disaster, Kumar has spent more than four and a half years in jails: nineteen
months during the Emergency and three years for leading a strike of colliery
workers of Jhagarakhand in Madhya Pradesh. He has
written numerous books and analyses on Punjab and Nagaland, among other issues.
Stephen Marks
Dr. Stephen P. Marks is the
François-Xavier Bagnoud Professor and Director of the
FXB Center
for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health, where
he is principal investigator on the Right to Development Project. Before coming
to Harvard in 1999, he was Director of the United Nations Studies Program and
Co-Director of the Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs Concentration at the School
of International and Public Affairs
(SIPA) of Columbia University.
He holds academic degrees in law and international relations from Stanford
University, the Universities of
Paris, Strasbourg, Besançon and Nice, as well as the University
of Damascus. His publications
relate to various aspects of international law and organizations, public
health, peacekeeping, development and human rights. In 1999 he co-edited and
contributed to The Future of International Human Rights (Transnational
Publishers, 1999). He has written on impunity for massive violations of human
rights in Cambodia and more recently on “The Hissène Habré Case: The Law and Politics of Universal
Jurisdiction,” which has just been published as part of the Princeton Project
on Universal Jurisdiction by the University of Pennsylvania Press.
Smita
Narula
Smita Narula, Executive Director of the Center for Human Rights
and Global Justice at New York University,
previously worked as Senior Researcher for South Asia at
Human Rights Watch (HRW). For the past six years, at HRW, Narula
investigated and authored several reports and articles on caste discrimination
and the rise of religious nationalism in India,
including HRW’s reports on state complicity in the
2002 massacres in Gujarat. In 2000, Narula
founded the International Dalit Solidarity Network,
which brings international organizations, donor agencies, and non governmental
organizations together to build a world wide movement against caste
discrimination. In 1997, Narula graduated from Harvard
Law School,
where she was editor in chief of Harvard’s Human Rights Journal. Before
law school, Narula received a Masters in
International Development from Brown University
and worked on HIV and public health at UNICEF and the United Nations
Development Fund.
Balakrishnan Rajagopal
Balakrishnan Rajagopal is Ford
International Assistant Professor of Law and Development, as well as Director
of MIT’s Program on Human Rights and Justice. He is on leave for 2003-2004. His
current research is in five areas: a) development-induced displacement including
through large projects; b) human rights and globalization, especially relating
to corporate social responsibility; c) economic, social and cultural rights
particularly relating to environment, land and housing, in comparative public
and private law; 4) social movements and multi-level governance including new
ways of organizing political power and authority; and 5) the relationship
between critical social and legal theory and progressive practice in planning
and economic development. Recently, he assisted the World Commission on Dams
develop a legal and policy framework on the human rights implications of large
dams and has consulted with UNDP on the articulation of a human rights approach
to development planning and policy. His research is focused primarily on South
Asia and Southeast Asia and also on the
legal systems of Brazil
and South Africa.
Rajagopal has recently published International Law From Below: Development,
Social Movements and Third World
Resistance (Cambridge University Press).
Peter Rosenblum
Peter Rosenblum
is an Associate Clinical Professor in Human Rights at Columbia
Law School.
He joined the Human Rights Program at Harvard
Law School
in the fall of 1996 and served as Associate Director until 2002, when he became
Clinical Director. Rosenblum also held an academic
appointment as Lecturer at Harvard Law
School and oversaw voluntary and
for-credit human rights projects with students. During this time, he wrote the
preface to Reduced to Ashes: The Insurgency and
Human Rights in Punjab. In 2003, Rosenblum joined Columbia
Law School.
He was formerly Program Director for the International Human Rights Law Group
and Human Rights Officer for the United Nations Centre for Human Rights. Rosenblum has engaged in human rights research and field missions
in Africa, Eastern Europe, and Asia.
His recent writing addresses human rights topics affecting Africa
and human rights pedagogy in the United States.
He is currently Member, International Advisory Council, Swedish NGO Foundation
for Human Rights; UN Secretary General’s Resource Group on the Democratic
Republic of the Congo; Harvard University
Committee on African Studies; and advisory board of Buffalo Human Rights Law
Review.
Teesta
Setalvad
Teesta Setalvad, Indian journalist and activist, is the Editor of Communalism Combat. She is the 2003 recipient of the Nuremberg
Human Rights Award. Setalvad is the founding member
of Sabrang Communications and Publishing, as well as
the founder and coordinator of KHOJ, a secular education project. She leads efforts
in Gujarat to document the abuses of the 2002 pogroms
against the Muslims, as well as expose the hate mobilization conducted by state
parties. Setalvad’s reporting in 1993 exposed the
anti-Muslim bias of the police force during the 1993 Bombay
riots. She has received numerous other awards recognizing her dedication to
human rights, such as the 2001 Pax Christi
International Peace Award. Setalvad has written
several books dealing with women, human rights and Hinduism.
Chris Sidoti
Chris Sidoti
is Director of the International Service for Human Rights (ISHR) based in Geneva.
Sidoti was Australian Human Rights Commissioner from August 14, 1995 to August 13, 2000. His career has included
serving as National Secretary of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace,
Manager of Executive Services in the NSW Department of Youth and Community
Services, Foundation Secretary of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission and Commissioner with the Australian Law Reform Commission, as well
as Race Discrimination Commissioner (1991) and Disability Discrimination
Commissioner (1997-99) within the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission. Sidoti
has held many senior honorary positions in non-governmental organizations,
including Deputy President of the Australian Council of Social Services,
President of the Youth Affairs Council of Australia and Chairperson of the
Public Interest Advocacy Centre and of the Uniya
Jesuit Social Research Institute. He has also served as visiting professor at
several universities in Australia.
Susannah Sirkin
Susannah Sirkin
is Deputy Director of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR). She has held this
position since 1987 when she joined the organization's staff. Previously, she
was Director of Membership Programs for Amnesty International USA. Sirkin has organized medical human rights investigations to
dozens of countries, including PHR's exhumations of
mass graves in the former Yugoslavia
and Rwanda for
the International Criminal Tribunals. She has authored and edited numerous
reports and articles on the medical consequences of human rights violations,
physical evidence of human rights abuses, and physician complicity in
violations. Sirkin co-directed the first
post-graduate course in medicine and human rights sponsored by Harvard
Medical School
in 1992. She served from 1992-2001 for PHR as a member of the Coordination
Committee of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, the co-recipient of
the 1997 Nobel Prize for Peace. PHR is one of the six original non-governmental
organizations that launched the International Campaign to Ban Landmines in
1992.
Henry Steiner
Henry J. Steiner is Jeremiah
Smith, Jr. Professor of Law and Founder and Director of the Law School Human
Rights Program at Harvard University.
He has served for many years as the chair and co-chair of the University
Committee on Human Rights Studies. Steiner has participated in conferences and
given lectures on human rights in over 20 countries. He has written on a wide
range of human rights topics, including political participation, ethnic
minority regimes, the discourse of human rights, and human rights institutions.
His co-authored book, International Human Rights in Context: Law, Politics,
Morals (2d ed. 2000, Oxford University Press), has been used in many countries
as the textbook for human rights courses. Steiner is also Chair of the Board of
Directors for the University of the Middle East.
Siddharth
Varadarajan
Siddharth
Varadarajan is Deputy Chief of the News Bureau for Times of India. He is the editor of the recently published
book Gujarat: The
Making of a Tragedy, which collects reports, analyses, narratives, and news
accounts on the 2002 Gujarat massacre of Muslims. Varadarajan has
reported on several important political events, from Kashmir
and the royal palace massacre in Nepal,
to Pakistan,
the weapons-inspection crisis in Iraq,
and the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.
He has also written extensively on communalism and the media. Varadarajan studied
at the London School of Economics and Columbia
University and taught economics at New
York University
before turning to journalism in 1995.
J.S.
Verma
Justice J.S. Verma retired as
Chair of the National Human Rights Commission at the end of 2002, after having
served for over three years. He had
previously retired as Chief Justice of the Indian Supreme Court on January 18, 1998. As Chair of the
NHRC, Justice Verma took suo
moto notice of the Gujarat
massacres on March 1, 2002,
bringing the NHRC into the campaign for justice in Gujarat.
Conference Sponsors
We would like to
thank the following programs
and
people for supporting this conference:
Jacqueline Bhabha
Harvard
University Committee on Human
Rights Studies
Sugata
Bose
Harvard University
Department of History
South Asia
Initiative, Harvard Asia
Center
South
Asian Center
Stephen Marks
François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights
Balakrishnan
Rajagopal
MIT Program on Human
Rights & Justice
The Reebok Human
Rights Foundation
Chris Sidoti
International Service
for Human Rights
Henry Steiner
Jim Cavallaro
Harvard
Law School,
Human Rights Program