Nazia Nazar
Last month a hunting convoy of H.H. Sheikh Saif Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior UAE, came under fire by miscreants in Gichk area of Panjgur. Two vehicles of the convoy were damaged. According to the tehsildar of the area, personnel of Frontier Corps and other security men retaliated, forcing the attackers to flee. The area was cordoned off and the convoy was taken to its camp. As per the media report, two vehicles of the convoy were damaged and the responsibility of the attack was later claimed by spokesman of banned Balochistan Liberation Front. The event may be taken seriously, as the dignitary is of great significance even if he was not present at the site of incident. Secondly, the claim of BLF indicates towards Indian support to BLF/Indian interference in the affairs of Pakistan.
In March 2016, RAW spy Kalbushan Yadev was arrested in Balochistan. He confessed for his involvement in subversive activities, which proved Pakistan’s claim that India is stoking the Balochistan rebellion. Brahamdagh Bugti, the Switzerland-based leader of the Balochistan Republican Party had told Indian media that he planned to seek political asylum in India. It goes without saying that banned Balochistan Republic Army and Balochistan Republic Party have the backing of India. In fact, to divert the attention of the international community from the oppression, repression and barbarism, India has started propaganda that a section of Balochistan people urged India to help them gain independence from Pakistan. Pakistan has taken up the matter with the United Nations, and provided a dossier of Indian vile acts in Balochistan and elsewhere. Indian has drawn flak for using pellet guns and killed scores of people and blinded thousands of Kashmiris.
But India stands exposed on many counts. Indian peacekeepers in Haiti are facing a probe by the United Nations for arriving in the country without the mandatory Cholera vaccination. Reportedly, more than 100 men of Assam Rifles, India’s oldest paramilitary force, landed in Haiti in July-August 2016 after they were certified by the home ministry as having taken the vaccine. The UN has officially sought a clarification from the Indian government as to why it confirmed that these troops had been vaccinated. The UN had been accused of having caused the cholera outbreak in Haiti in 2010. Haiti officially holds UN responsible for this introduction of the cholera strain which has caused over 10000 deaths in the country in the past 6 years. In a rare gesture by the UN last month, then Secretary General Ban Ki Moon had apologized to Haiti for the outbreak in an address to the General Assembly.
The Indian Ministry of Defence spokesman has stated that these troops have been deployed under the charter of UN, however, has refrained from commenting on how fake certification was issued. This is the second episode where Indian UN peacekeepers have ended up in controversy. Last month UN had complained that Indian troops deployed for peacekeeping duties were not equipped with sufficient personal protection gear; as required vide the standard protocol. The issue is an international embarrassment which shows poor professional standards of Indian Armed Forces, and that documents endorsed by Indian government are unreliable and fake. Instead of contributing to the UN peacekeeping missions, India is causing embarrassment to the UN. But there is more to that. The pattern of Army’s misconduct was also observed when contingent of Indian army performed duties as UN peacekeeping mission abroad.
In Congo, army personnel had raped women that resulted in unlawful pregnancies. Twelve officers and thirty nine soldiers were probed in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh, India, for sexually abusing the local women and for having fathered children while on UN peacekeeping mission in Congo in 2008. UN Commission found DNA evidence of children born to Congo women, having distinct Indian features. The Indian soldiers had exploited women of Congo, and sexual abuse cases reached to hundreds. These girls and women were raped either through coercion or by taking advantage of hunger to provide food items and Indian-made cosmetics. UN authorities ordered DNA tests and asked Indian government for legal proceedings against these officers and soldiers. However, there is no parallel to the atrocities perpetrated on Kashmiris in Indian Held Kashmir where Indian soldiers’ stories of rape and murder are very common.
Nevertheless, some human rights organizations have been exposing Indian soldiers and officers involved in sex scandals and rapes. The Indian government had started crackdown against Kashmiris in the disputed territory of Kashmir in January 1990, after Kashmiris had started armed struggle in 1989. Rape by Indian security forces most often occurred during crackdowns, cordon-and-search operations during which men were held for identification in parks or schoolyards while security forces searched their homes. In these situations, the security forces frequently engage in collective punishment against the civilian population by assaulting residents and burning their homes. Rape has also occurred frequently during reprisal attacks on civilians. Women who are the victims of rape are often stigmatised, and their testimony and integrity impugned. Social attitudes which cast the woman and not her attacker, as the guilty party often enjoys clout with the judiciary, making rape cases difficult to prosecute.
In January 2013 also, clashes between Indian and Pakistani soldiers on the LoC had stirred tension between the two countries. However, hostility along LoC and working boundary, especially after Narendra Modi was elected prime minister, has increased manifold. Balochistan has been in the throes of violence, but handling of the situation by the armed forces by winning hearts and minds of the people through various measures has brought peace in the province. Because of tension on the Afghanistan, which is also stirred by India, the latter is trying to take advantage of deployment of Pakistan army on Pak-Afghan border to check the movements of terrorists between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Their aim is to keep Pakistan embroiled in a security dilemma and incite it into arms race so that it could not revive its economy, as Indian Army Generals are against reconciliation and friendly relationship as desired by the government of Pakistan.
