ssm@cmu-ri-leg.ARPA (Sesh Murthy) (03/28/85)
The main Sikh religious council on Monday called for a mass struggle for
restoration of civil liberties and withdrawal of the Indian army from
troubled Punjab state, home of the country's Sikh minority.
It said statewide agitation would begin April 13, the harvest
festival of Baisakhi.
In New Delhi, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's government introduced a
motion in the national Parliament seeking extension of direct federal
rule in Punjab for six more months. It also introduced a bill to
toughen a controversial preventive detention law.
''The government has unleashed untold repression in Punjab since the
army attack on the Golden Temple last June,'' the council resolved.
''The time has come to restore the lost honor of the Sikhs.''
The meeting, held inside the Golden Temple complex, was attended by
four high priests of Sikhism and the president of the main Sikh
political party, Harchand Singh Longowal.
Home Affairs Minister Shankarrao B. Chavan told the lawmakers in New
Delhi that the situation in the agriculturally rich state remains
''disturbed'' because of continuing hit-and-run attacks by Sikh
terrorists.
A Hindu leader, Krishan Lal Manchanda, was assassinated late Sunday
by unidentified Sikh gunmen at his house in Chandigarh, 140 miles
southeast of the Sikh holy city.
Authorities imposed a ban on public assembly and army troops
intensified patrols in Chandigarh as violent protests against the
opposition politician's slaying flared Monday. Mourners at
Manchanda's funeral attacked some policemen and hurled stones at
vehicles, reports from the area said.
Opposition leader and former foreign minister Atal B. Vajpayee said
there has been ''a complete breakdown of law and order in
Chandigarh'' - joint capital of Punjab and neighboring Haryana state.
The religious council, formally known as the Sikh Temple Management
Committee, said Sikh leaders would not discuss a resolution of the
three-year Punjab crisis with the government until an estimated 4,000
youths were freed from state jails and a judicial inquiry ordered
into the widespread anti-Sikh riots last autumn triggered by Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi's assassination.
The government says Mrs. Gandhi's Sikh security guards shot her to
death.
The Indian press and civil liberties groups, claiming members of the
governing Congress Party instigated the violence, also have demanded
a judicial probe into the riots, which claimed 2,717 lives, according
to official figures. Millions of dollars worth of Sikh-owned property
was destroyed in the carnage.
The council urged the government to grant amnesty to thousands of
Sikh soldiers who mutinied last June. The desertions were sparked by
the army raid on Sikh extremists barricaded in the Golden Temple, the
holiest Sikh shrine. Nearly 1,200 people reportedly perished in the
assault.
Punjab has been under direct control of the federal government since
October 1983, when the state administration was dismissed for failing
to quell Sikh terrorism.
A large number of Sikhs have been imprisoned under two controversial
laws: the National Security Act, which allows preventive detention
without trial for up to two years in Punjab, and the Terrorist
Affected Areas Act, which permits closed trials in special courts and
shifts the burden of proof from the prosecution to the accused
person.
The bill introduced in Parliament on Monday seeks to amend the
security act by permitting authorities to jail a Punjab suspect for
six months without a government-appointed judicial board being
notified of the arrest. Presently, the detention has to be reported
to the board within three months.
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