Asia Times: India, Pakistan imprison each other's children



	January 14, 1999	atimes.com

India-Pakistan

India, Pakistan imprison each other's children
By Rita Manchanda

NEW DELHI - Human rights activists in India andPakistan are trying to convince their governments to releasechild prisoners detained in each other's jails as securitythreats.

Two-year-old Shaminder Kumar and his brothers Amar, 6, andAjay, 9, were jailed with their father who was sentenced to threeyears rigorous imprisonment in Landikotal jail in Pakistan'sKhyber Agency in February 1996.

The father, Ashok Kumar, an unskilled worker, was picked up bythe Pakistan police at the Torkham border check post on theAfghanistan-Pakistan frontier as he attempted to make his way toJalalabad enroute to Europe.

Human rights groups in India and Pakistan are jointlycampaigning for their release, insisting that the boys, now threeyears older, are hapless victims of the politics of non-cooperation between the bureaucracies of the two rival countries.

Appeals on the Internet to the human rights community and tothe International Commission of the Red Cross to intervene havehad an impact.

Last December, Kumar and his three sons were suddenly moved toKot Lacpath in Lahore, near the Attari-Wagah border, the onlyofficial landroute along the nearly 2,000 km patrolled border.

According to lawyer Rukshanda Naz, with the non-governmentalAurat Foundation of Peshawar in the Khyber Agency, Ashok Kumar isnumber 12 on a list of prisoners who might be exchanged by thetwo governments.

But India's Ministry of External Affairs and the Pakistan HighCommission in New Delhi told members of the Pakistan-India Forumfor Peace and Democracy, a people-to-people initiative which hasjoined the campaign, that such an exchange has not been proposed.

In all probability the boys would be in jail for many moreyears unless Pakistan's Interior Ministry and foreign officeagree to their immediate release and the Indian authorities ownup to their father being an Indian national.

Time is running out as Ashok Kumar's jail term will becomplete in March this year, and if he is not repatriated hecould face another three year sentence. He was imprisoned underSection 40 of the Frontier Control Regulations under which hemust furnish a sum of 200,000 rupees (roughly 5,000 dollars) andtwo sureties for good behaviour or be jailed.

Officials on both sides insist that they work for the promptrelease of child internees when they hear of them. Indianofficials claimed that two minors in a group of Pakistanisapprehended in Gujarat recently were returned to Pakistan.

But Mohammad Yousaf, 13, was not so fortunate. The boy, theson of a poor carpet weaver in Multan who smuggled his way intoIndia to meet his favourite film star Shahrukh Khan, served a sixmonth sentence in an Indian jail.

Released last year he was taken back by the Pakistangovernment only because of pressure from rights activists in thatcountry.

Bitter rivalry between the two countries has prevented bothfrom working out a more humane arrangement for expediting therelease of each other's civil internees. An arrangement workedout in 1982 has not worked.

Indifferent bureaucracies on both sides take years to completeeven what is a simple process of status verification of releasedprisoners which should not take more than one month.

Rights organisations have had to step in and lobby governmentsto provide relief to indigenous fisherfolk caught on the wrongside of the sea, farmers who unwittingly stray across the landborder or relatives who overstay. The creation of Pakistan in1947 divided countless families, and embassies in both countriesare besieged by people wanting to visit relatives and friendsacross the border.

In January 1996, two farmers Mohammad Amin and Khalil Ahmedwhose fields in Pakistan's Punjab province abut the Indian borderstrayed into India. They were sentenced to six month terms injail, but they languished in prison for a further two years.

Like the Pakistani boy who slipped across the border to meethis matinee idol, the two farmers were freed and sent back homein 1998 only as a result of a campaign by the human rightscommunity in India and Pakistan.

Still detained, however, in a police camp near Amritsarrailway station is Kuniphal Hamza, a Pakistani national fromKarachi. He was convicted in October 1997 for forging an visaextension to visit relatives in southern Kerala state in India.

Hamza completed his sentence over a year ago but he is stillin custody as the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi has yetto own him up as their national.

Because of pressure from rights groups, the issue of civilinternees was on the agenda of the joint India-Pakistan meetingin New Delhi last November. Officials agreed to exchange lists ofprisoners before the next meeting scheduled to be held inIslamabad.

Rights activists hope the Indian children Shaminder, Ajay andAmar and all the others will be on the list.(Inter Press Service)

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