The Mask of Democracy
By Ashok Agrwaal
The State may repress by making laws that are unjust or unfair or unequal. Or the implementation of the laws may be unjust and unfair, because of an inefficient, corrupt or biased executive/ administrative apparatus. Common sense tells us that usually both sorts of repression prevail.

Cover illustration by V. Bansode

Human Rights – Indian Society and State Repression
By Girish Patel
State terrorism is only one of the manifestations of state repression in modern India. The extension of state repression to the various spheres of civil society and in the economy, are other forms of state repression.

Legalities of the Afghan Bombing
By Mihir Desai
The September 11 attacks on WTC have been condemned world over as dastardly and totally reprehensible. But in the sound and fury of reproaches, the questions concerning the morality and legality of the US actions against Afghanistan have been muzzled. It is important to test US actions under International Law, because the US always contends that its international coercive actions promote democracy, advancement of human rights and furtherance of the rule of law.

US Patriot Act against Terrorism
By Namita Malhotra
In response to the attack by terrorists on the World Trade Center, the government of United States drafted and passed a terrorism law with amazing speed. The law basically removes several procedural obstacles for investigating terrorism. This will, in turn, chip away at the American constitution, including the First Amendment, which guarantees freedom of speech and expression, and protects privacy of the people.

Peaceful protest – an act of sedition?
By Usha Pulu
Criticizing government policy landed six young men in jail. The only act they had committed, even as per the police and the prosecution, was distributing leaflets expressing their views about the American bombing of innocents in Afghanistan.

POTO and Terrorism
By P. A. Sebastian
The Government must be armed with an extraordinary law to deal with an extraordinary situation like terrorism. This argument has been proved factually incorrect.

The Naga Story - Then and Now
By Niketu Iralu
Excerpts from the meeting sponsored by the North East Studies and Policy Research, India International Centre.

A journey in courage and determination
Minu Jose profiles Justice Zakeria Mohammed Yacoob

Speeding up the Judicial Process
Excerpts from a speech by Mr. Justice S. P. Bharucha

From Social Bystanders to
Active Citizens
Newly elected Ashoka Fellow Chingmak combines modern values and traditional governance in the process of democratisation in North-eastern India

Editorial

Report

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act
An excerpt from a report by South Asian Human Rights Documentation Centre

Policing the Police
By Mukundan Menon
India must ratify the UN Convention against torture. The domestic law must be amended to make torture a penal offence. The sovereign immunity enjoyed by erring custodians under the laws inherited from colonial times must be taken away so that they become accountable for their deeds.

Punjab-Dark Clouds of State Repression
By Arunjeev Singh Walia
The government gave the Punjab police excessive powers. So much so that they became a law unto themselves. The continuing excesses of security forces in Punjab have broken the backbone of the once peaceful and prosperous state.

Other issues:

communalism
Gujarat – A Crime against Humanity
By Justice H. Suresh (Retd.)
What we have witnessed in Gujarat, where hundreds of men, women and children were burnt alive by organized communal gangs, is one of the worst violations of human rights in recent years.

History through the Prism of Constructed Identity
By Teesta Setalvad
Maharashtra, a region with a vibrant, radical and reformist tradition, which has always challenged deep caste hierarchies and barriers, has been an unfortunate victim of a narrow parochialism for over two decades now.

Institutionalized Communalism in the Police Force
By Colin Gonsalves
Only the judiciary, through judicial pronouncements, can lay down a new law for the effective and immediate prosecution of police officers who engage in communal crime.

media
Whose Convergence is it Anyway?
By Lawrence Liang
At a political level, while the Convergence Bill is apparently about new technologies of communication, no one states what new technologies mean in the context of recomposition of a public sphere

housing
Whither the Urban Poor?
By Dr Amita Bhide
A review of the Slum Areas of Maharashtra (Improvement, Clearance and Redevelopment) (Second Amendment) Act, 2001

The Tolly’s Nullah Eviction – a Tale of Woe
By Chandan Kumar Das and Rudrapratap Chakraborty
Two thousand families living beside Tolly’s Nullah were evicted without a thought for the fact that their lives would be uprooted. Without any proper rehabilitation, their hutments were flattened by bulldozers, paving way for the construction of the Metro Rail, to be extended overhead from Tollygunje to Garia to benefit millions of commuters in the city of Kolkata.

sexual minorities
Medicalization of Homosexuality: a Human Rights Approach
By Arvind Narrain and Tarunabh Khaitan
Though there were ancient traditions of same sex love in the world, the homosexual as a person is a particularly modern invention. The emergence of the homosexual as a person is closely tied to the way the medical sciences and the law have categorized him/her.

Where Saving Lives is a Crime
By Aditya Bondyopadhyay
It is interesting to note that the government has such double standards where homosexuality is concerned. On the one hand, it recognizes that work with MSM (Men who have Sex with Men) is important to prevent HIV. On the other hand, it chooses to carry on with a law like Section 377 IPC which labels all who work with this group of men as abetters of homosexuality.

adivasis
The Colonization of Little Andaman Island
By Pankaj Sekhsaria
The Onges form a small community of around a hundred individuals, and the 732 sq km of the thickly forested island of Little Andaman is their only home. A powerful two-pronged attack – on the natural resource base that sustains the Onge and on the culture of the community – has over the past three decades slowly but surely pushed the Onges to the brink of extinction.

labour
Contempt for Labour
By Mukul Sinha
It appears that law makers have a distrust for labour, and have therefore deliberately denied them their fundamental right to prosecute those who commit the breach of the labour laws.

Critique of the SAIL Judgement
By Jane Cox

health
Of Health, Healing and Human Rights
By Pradip Prabhu
A judicial perspective on health

prisoners rights
Plight of Prisoners in the Shillong District Jail
By D. D. G. Dympep
A study conducted by MPHRC

displacement
Displacement and the Land Acquisition Act 1894
By Walter Fernandes
Why are tribal areas not considered a part of our history?

globalisation
War profiteering
Do drug Transnational Corporations (TNCs) put profits before public health? Does the WTO regime severely restricts the capacity of national governments to take measures to safeguard public health. The Anthrax scare raises several issues.

The Bt Cotton Fiasco – Stepping into a trap
By Devinder Sharma
With the insect developing immunity against the Bt toxin in the plant, scientists are now trying to introduce genetically manipulated varieties with two Bt genes. The ‘biological circle of poison’ is certainly going to be more dangerous than the chemical cycle that farmers have been forced to live with.

children
The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2000
By Maharukh Adenwalla
The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 is far from being a perfect legislation to protect and promote the rights of children. The mistakes in the earlier law have been replicated in the present enactment.

women
Gender Neutrality in Rape Law
By Flavia Agnes
Though the move to reform rape laws is in the right direction and is long overdue, unless it is fine tuned to the specific needs of the concerned segments, its aspirations will remain at the level of rhetoric at best, or result in misery and humiliation at worst.

Sex Selection and the Law
By Qudsiya Contractor
As far as women go, has society really changed? Violence against women continues to be an all-pervasive phenomenon; there have been a growing number of dowry deaths, rape and the revival of customs like Sati and female infanticide. On the other hand, technology has become an aid to perpetuate discrimination against women in the most sophisticated forms.