Human rights cannot be excuse for Terrorism
Decoding the polemic of conscience is fraught with pathos and pitfalls. Human rights, once the scourge of autocrats, is being haunted by the clichéd question: is one man’s terrorist another man’s freedom fighter? Last week, Amnesty International condemned Israel for the death of Walid Daqqa, a Palestinian terrorist who kidnapped, tortured and mutilated Israeli soldier Moshe Tamam, by gouging our his eyes and castrating him.
Amnesty, the global torchbearer of human rights is banned in India for money laundering. The human rights space itself is blurred by ideological incongruities; many UN staff in Gaza turned out to be Hamas terrorists, some of whom even took part in the October attacks in Israel. UN experts recently condemned Israeli drone strikes that killed Hamas deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri.
Liberal societies have been historically soft on terror. In India for decades, the Congress and other secular governments—even Vajpayee’s—refused to retaliate to terror attacks. Not anymore. Pakistan, which sponsors terrorism in the subcontinent has accused India of exterminating wanted terrorists on its soil, in violation of the UN Charter. There is an Israeli parallel to this. After the massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics by Palestinian killers, Israel launched ‘Operation Wrath of God’ to hunt down and eliminate the murderers. It took 20 years.
Again the Israelis are hunting down and killing every single perpetrator of the October 7 barbarities. Hamas knows its leaders are dead men walking. Pakistan’s ISI is now figuring that Mossad tactics can be Xeroxed. On April 5, Defence minister Rajnath Singh declared, “If any terrorist from a neighbouring country tries to disturb India or carry out terrorist activities here… escapes to Pakistan we will go to Pakistan and kill him there.” Just as Modi’s opponents fear the ED at home, there is fear in Islamabad.
So, is the secret poisoning of Sajid Mir, a mastermind of the Mumbai attacks in which 170 people were killed, a violation of human rights?
Is the killing in Karachi of JeM terrorist Zahoor Mistry, a hijacker of an Indian Airlines plane, violation of human rights?
Is the killing of Babbar Khalsa operative Ripudaman Singh Malik, who allegedly bombed an Air India flight in 1985, which killed 329 people, a human rights violation?
Is the shooting of Bashir Ahmad Peer, Hizbul Mujahideen’s “launching chief” who recruited, trained and infiltrated terrorists and arms and ammunition into Kashmir valley, a human rights violation?
The concept of human rights goes back to 539 BC, when great Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon. Instead of massacring all men and children and carting off the women as slaves, Cyrus freed them all, announced their right to adopt their religion of choice and established racial equality. The translation of his laws, inscribed in the baked-clay Cyrus Cylinder, correspond to the first four Articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the UN.
Therein lies the crux of the human rights paradox: political will. After the Mumbai attacks, Manmohan Singh’s Congress-led government dithered on a counter strike on Pakistan and ultimately stayed away in the name of maturity and self-restraint. It simply lacked the political will to avenge its murdered citizens. King Cyrus could have wiped Babylon from the face of the earth, but chose not to. That was his strength. Human rights is the principle of championing individuals oppressed by autocrats or murdered in prison like Russian lawyer Alexei Navalny was, not giving an excuse to murderers to wreak havoc in the name of defending oppression. That’s human wrongs.