publications

X. Recommendations

To the Indian central government

End support to Salwa Judum; direct the Chhattisgarh state government to investigate and prosecute security forces and Salwa Judum members responsible for abuses, and provide information about missing persons

  • Take all necessary and appropriate measures to end unlawful Salwa Judum activities, end all government support to Salwa Judum, including the provision of weapons, and end all participation by government security forces in Salwa Judum operations, including raids and reprisals.
  • Take all necessary steps to ensure that government security forces abide by India’s obligations under international law and the Indian Constitution, including respect for the rights to freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, and from torture and other mistreatment.
  • Consistent with its constitutional obligation to ensure state compliance with the Constitution, the Indian central government should call upon the Chhattisgarh state government to immediately investigate and prosecute individuals, including senior government officials, implicated in serious human rights abuses in Dantewada and Bijapur districts. The Indian central government should also express its willingness to conduct an investigation upon a request by the Chhattisgarh state government.
  • Call upon the Chhattisgarh state government to promptly make public the progress of and findings from its investigations against individuals implicated in serious human rights abuses in Dantewada and Bijapur districts.
  • Protect all witnesses, victims, and others who provide information for criminal prosecutions from possible reprisals, including by establishing an adequately funded witness protection program.
  • Immediately ensure that the Chhattisgarh government reconstitutes an effective State Human Rights Commission to pursue all complaints of human rights abuses, including abuses linked to the conflict between Naxalites, Salwa Judum, and government security forces. Ensure that the Commission uses all authority at its disposal including powers of suo motu investigation and subpoena.  

Protect displaced persons

  • Develop and implement a national policy and scheme for internally displaced persons in consultation with displaced persons, and governmental, nongovernmental, and intergovernmental organizations, and in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement (UN Guiding Principles). The policy should provide guarantees against arbitrary and unlawful displacement. It should also implement the rights of displaced persons to government assistance without discrimination, facilitate safe return where people are willing to return, ensure sustainable resettlement, and provide adequate compensation for loss of property during displacement.            

In the interim,

  • Ensure that Andhra Pradesh government officials immediately stop the destruction of IDP hamlets, illegal forced evictions, forced relocation of displaced persons, and confiscation of their property.
  • Permit the Andhra Pradesh government to allow displaced persons to use reserved forest areas for non-forest purposes (including as habitation).
  • Instruct the Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh state governments to provide displaced persons all government services, including employment guarantees or other means of sustaining a living, access to food-for-work benefits, and subsidized food rations, and issue all documents required by them to benefit from these welfare programs.  
  • Closely monitor the progress of rehabilitation schemes being developed by the Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh state governments in order to ensure the safe return and rehabilitation of villagers who are willing to return.
  • Provide additional special infrastructure support to the Chhattisgarh state government to clear landmines from Dantewada and Bijapur districts in particular.

Maintain law and order in accordance with international human rights standards

  • Thoroughly revise the police training curriculum to include appropriate training on human rights issues including lawful interrogation techniques and best practices. All training should be consistent with international human rights standards, such as the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials and other international human rights standards.

  • Prevent child recruitment in hostilities and assist in reintegration of children recruited and used by all armed parties

    • Take steps to ensure that all children under age 18 serving as special police officers (SPOs) are identified, removed, and provided with alternative education or vocational training opportunities.
    • Amend the Indian Police Act, 1861, to introduce age 18 as the minimum age for recruitment of SPOs to prevent future recruitment of children.
    • Develop a national scheme for the identification, release, and reintegration of children recruited by armed groups or police in consultation with governmental, nongovernmental, and intergovernmental organizations, and in accordance with the Paris Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups.
    • Develop and implement effective measures to ensure that all individuals recruited for police duties are at least 18 years old; develop and impose appropriate sanctions against individuals found to be recruiting or using children under age 18, including those using underage former Naxalites as police informers or SPOs.
    • Implement the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, and provide proof of birth to all children.
    • Ratify the Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention (International Labor Organization Convention No. 182), which defines the forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict as one of the worst forms of child labor.

    To the Chhattisgarh state government

    End government support to Salwa Judum, address impunity for Salwa Judum and police abuses, and prevent further abuses

    • Take all necessary and appropriate measures to end unlawful Salwa Judum activities, and end all government or police support to Salwa Judum, including provision of weapons, and participation by police or SPOs in Salwa Judum operations, including raids and reprisals.
    • Initiate serious and independent investigations of individuals responsible for carrying out or ordering human rights abuses, regardless of rank, and prosecute as appropriate. Also investigate the role of senior police and administrative officials in Dantewada and Bijapur districts in the commission of or failure to prevent such abuses, and take appropriate action, including removal from office and/or criminal prosecution.
    • Immediately make public the progress of and findings from investigations against individuals implicated in serious human rights abuses in Dantewada and Bijapur districts. 
    • End deployment of SPOs for paramilitary operations against Naxalites.
    • Adopt and disseminate public statements denouncing human rights abuses linked to Salwa Judum.
    • Determine the fate of those who “disappeared” including those taken to Salwa Judum camps, arbitrarily detained in police stations, or killed; provide this information to family members.
    • Establish a district-level missing persons’ unit in which families and concerned parties may give information about missing family members without fear of retaliation.
    • End the practice of arbitrary detention and strictly implement the D.K. Basu guidelines on arrest and detention issued by the Supreme Court of India; initiate disciplinary action against police officers who have violated them. Create awareness campaigns to disseminate information regarding people’s rights during arrest and detention. 
    • Repeal the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act, 2005.
    • Avoid the use of schools for military or Salwa Judum operations.
    • Investigate and prosecute as appropriate, harassment, threats, and violence against journalists and activists reporting on the conflict between Naxalites, Salwa Judum, and government security forces, or advocating on behalf of victims of human rights abuses. Ensure humanitarian organizations have free and safe access to provide assistance to displaced persons and others affected by the conflict.

    Protect and assist persons displaced by the conflict

    • Take measures at all levels of government to stop harassment by police, SPOs, or Salwa Judum members of displaced persons who have resumed cultivation, and those who have returned to their villages.
    • Ensure, in accordance with the UN Guiding Principles, that internally displaced persons are protected against attacks or other acts of violence, and that they are provided without discrimination, safe access to essential food and potable water, basic shelter and clothing, and essential medical services and sanitation. 
    • Set up a state-level planning committee to facilitate the return of villagers who are willing to return to their villages. The planning committee should consist of representatives of governmental, nongovernmental, and intergovernmental organizations with relevant expertise, as well as representatives of gram panchayats (elected village-level council) from evacuated villages and other displaced villagers drawn from tribal communities (not only gram panchayat members). The committee should develop a return program that will ensure that displaced communities can return to their homes in safety and dignity, and resume their livelihoods. All return programs should be consistent with the UN Guiding Principles and respect the rights of internally displaced communities.
    • Ensure that infrastructure for villages is restored at least to the standard that existed prior to their destruction and evacuation, at state cost.
    • Form a district-level team including NGOs, activists, government officials, and displaced persons to conduct a new survey of displaced persons from camps and other sites who wish to return to their villages. This survey should include documentation of family and village names, and the losses incurred by each family during displacement.
    • Release complete information, updated through June 2008, of the number of displaced persons residing in camps and in all other sites where displaced people reside in Bijapur and Dantewada districts.
    • Where villages are inaccessible for security reasons, or where villagers are unwilling to return, pay appropriate levels of compensation, including maintenance for the internally displaced, and ensure their access to health, education, and employment or other means of sustaining a living.
    • Ensure equal access to all government services for displaced persons in areas not recognized as camps, including permanent housing sites and unrecognized camps.

    Prevent recruitment of, and identify and rehabilitate underage SPOs

    • Identify all SPOs under the age of 18 and remove them from service; provide them with appropriate assistance, including alternative education or vocational training.
    • Offer honorable discharge to all SPOs who were recruited when they were less than age 18, and provide them with alternative vocational opportunities.
    • End the use of underage former Naxalites as police informers or SPOs.
    • Implement the Registration of Births and Deaths Act, 1969, and provide proof of birth to all children.

    To the Andhra Pradesh government

    • Extend all government schemes and services to internally displaced persons (IDPs), and issue job cards, ration cards, voter identity cards, and other documents required by displaced persons to make use of all government programs and services.
    • Order the Forest Department to immediately end unlawful destruction of IDP hamlets, forced eviction or relocation of villagers, and confiscation of property.
    • Instruct all gram panchayats in Khammam and Warangal districts to cooperate with displaced persons; make public announcements assuring displaced persons that they will not be harmed if their identities are revealed.
    • Protect displaced persons from harassment by local tribal communities and initiate legal action where appropriate.
    • Ensure that government officials who instigate local tribal communities to commit offenses are prosecuted as per the law. 
    • Protect displaced persons from harassment by Salwa Judum members from Chhattisgarh.

    To the CPI (Maoist) Party

    • End human rights abuses and laws of war violations against civilians, including killings, the use of threats, extortion, the indiscriminate use of landmines, and reprisals against individuals who have participated in Salwa Judum, or served as SPOs or police informers.
    • Immediately end bomb and other attacks against schools.
    • Ensure strict adherence to international human rights standards and international humanitarian law.
    • End jan adalat (people’s court) proceedings that do not meet international fair trial standards, and cease all death sentences and all extrajudicial punishments, including against suspected informers and others suspected of offenses against the Naxalites.
    • End attacks that deliberately or indiscriminately target civilians or civilian objects.
    • Issue and implement policies guaranteeing safe return for villagers who wish to leave Salwa Judum camps and return to their villages.
    • Immediately stop all recruitment of children under the age of 18 in any capacity, including into bal sangams (children’s associations).
    • Release all children and give those recruited before age 18 the option to leave.
    • Inform families (through public announcements and use of the local media) that children under age 18 will not be recruited.
    • Take all appropriate steps to ensure that Naxalite commanders and other cadres do not recruit children under age 18, “voluntarily” or otherwise, and provide the international community with documentation of disciplinary actions taken against Naxalite leaders responsible for such recruitment.
    • Cooperate with UNICEF and other appropriate agencies to demobilize children from Naxalite forces and transfer them into appropriate rehabilitation and reintegration programs. 
    • Cease all reprisals against people, including children, who leave Naxalite forces, and against the family members of such people. 

    To Foreign governments, Intergovernmental Bodies, and International Financial Institutions 

    • Publicly and privately urge the Indian central and Chhattisgarh state governments to end all support to Salwa Judum, cease arbitrary arrests and torture, and pursue accountability for violations of human rights.
    • Encourage the Chhattisgarh state government to use existing funds allocated to heath care and education facilities to provide such facilities for all displaced persons in Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh without discrimination, and where possible, to increase the funding available for such facilities to ensure that basic health and education standards are met.
    • Assist programs for appropriate human rights training for the Indian central and Chhattisgarh government security forces including the Chhattisgarh state police.