Statement of the Communist Ghadar Party of India, November 21, 2001
The winter session of Parliament has opened at a time when the President of India has promulgated the Prevention of Terrorism Ordinance (POTO) 2001 on October 25. This has been done under the slogan of "waging war against terrorism" and "preventing terrorism". However, POTO itself constitutes the biggest act of state terrorism against all men and women of conscience in our country. This is alongside the already stepped up police terror against Muslims and those "suspected" of being terrorists. The justification for POTO according to the Union Home Ministry are:
It will be laughable if it were not so tragic that the government of a sovereign country pushes through a fascist law in such haste, bypassing discussion in parliament, for such reasons as stated above!
The experience of the Indian people with TADA exposed clearly that the real target of such black laws is not "terrorism" but the mass movement of the working class and all the oppressed. Such laws legitimise the use of force by the state to quell all forms of dissent within the country. The broad and mass scale opposition to TADA forced the Government of India to give up this hated law. The Vajpayee Government now wants to re-enact TADA in a more sophisticated form, under the name of POTO and POTA (when the Ordinance becomes an Act).
Section 3 of POTO defines a "Terrorist Act" as an act done by using weapons and explosive substances or other methods in a manner as to cause or likely to cause death or injuries to any person or persons or loss or damage to property or disruption of essential supplies and services, etc., with intent to threaten the unity or integrity of India or to strike terror in any section of the people. This definition of terrorism will convict our national heroes like Shaheed Bhagat Singh and Chandrashekhar Azad, and countless others. Such a definition has been made despite the recommendations of the Law Commission, which had recommended that any anti-terrorist act should explicitly exclude the actions of trade unions and political mass movements from its purview. The promulgation of POTO shows that the NDA Government has completely disregarded the counsel of the Law Commission.
POTO defines "terrorist organisation" as an organisation that indulges in "terrorist acts". Twenty three organisations have been banned under POTO in the first list with promises of more to come. The government does not have to justify why it has declared such and such organisation as "terrorist". The list includes various organisations, particularly from the North East, which have been waging a determined struggle for self-determination and can scarcely be termed "terrorist" except under the definition provided by POTO, namely of being a threat to "national unity and territorial integrity of India". Successive governments at the centre have for a long time been raising the spectre of the threat to national unity and territorial integrity in order to justify armed repression of the popular mass movements in the border regions of India. They have failed to address the economic, social and political concerns of the people of these regions, fostering further alienation amongst the peoples. POTO marks an escalation in the violence of the Indian state against the alienated peoples of Kashmir and the North East. For this reason, POTO must be opposed and repealed!
For long, the main leaders of the NDA government, including Home Minister Lal Kishan Advani, have been calling for a ban on various communist parties, groups and organisations, citing acts of violence organised by some of these organisations in certain parts of the country. POTO as of now does not take on the banning of communist and workers organisations and groups, but it lays the ground for that. The government can at any moment declare any communist party or group to be a "terrorist organisation" even as it can declare any other political or social organisation of the people as terrorist, and ban it under POTO. For this reason too, POTO must be opposed and repealed!
POTO allows the government and police forces to arrest and charge anyone with terrorism. The onus of proving that he or she is not a "terrorist", not a member of a "terrorist organisation", or not knowingly encouraging "terrorism" through various means, falls on the accused. Statements of the accused made before police officers while in custody are admissible as evidence against the accused. POTO allows use of tape recordings, video clippings, intercepted electronic messages, telephone calls as so-called evidence against the accused. In other words it allows the prosecution to "prove" its case against the accused by allowing it to manufacture evidence through tortures and other dubious means.
The accused cannot be released on personal bond or bail by the magistrate in the absence of approval of the prosecuting authority, the government. POTO allows a person to be locked up in police custody for a period of three months and in judicial custody for 6 months simply because the prosecution has not yet prepared a charge sheet. After the charge sheet is presented, POTO allows the government to send the accused to jail as a POTO detainee! POTO thus constitutes an outright fascist attack on democratic rights and the right to conscience of Indians. For this reason, POTO must be repealed!
The government claims POTO has safeguards to prevent its "misuse", that it has drawn lessons from the infamous experience of TADA under which people like Justice Ajit Singh Bains, Professor Dalip Singh, actor Sanjay Dutt and many others were incarcerated, including students fighting against milk price hike in Gujarat and workers fighting for their right to organise. In fact, what the Vajpayee Government has done is to re-enact TADA in a new form with greater sophistication. There can be no excuse, no justification, for locking up a person merely on the suspicion that he or she is a supporter of "terrorism". This is itself naked state terrorism, nothing else! It is clear that the aim of the government is to attack political opponents, terrorise them as well as ensure that ordinary people keep away from politics for fear of being labelled "terrorist". For this reason, POTO must be repealed!
The government is justifying POTO declaring that it is following the example of the US and UK. According to the Home Ministry, "countries like UK and USA that have faced the onslaught of International terrorism much less than India have put comprehensive anti-Terrorism Laws on their Statute Books…." It is truly pathetic that the upholders of "swadeshi" and the "Indian Way" are slavishly looking towards the Anglo-American imperialists as their role model in governance. This too at a time when the working masses in these and other countries are coming out in powerful opposition to the curtailment of democratic rights and civil liberties, and their right to conscience.
In promulgating POTO, the Vajpayee Government has declared that it is hell-bent on fascising the political life of the country in pursuit of the narrow agenda of the most reactionary chauvinist war-mongering sections of the Indian bourgeoisie. It has joined the US led global war coalition and is desperately seeking a share of the spoils for itself in the reactionary redivision of Asia that has begun. Through militarisation, war and fascism, the most reactionary sections of the Indian big bourgeoisie are striving to drown the struggles of India's people in blood. They want to use India's workers, peasants and youth as cannon fodder in an imperialist war. POTO is part of the fascist-imperialist strategy of the most reactionary circles of the Indian big bourgeoisie.
For all of the reasons cited above, it is essential for all MPs of conscience to work for the defeat of POTO in the Parliament.
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