The Imperative of Fact finding: Truth Telling as a Route to Justice

This month’s bulletin carries extracts from the ‘Independent Peoples Tribunal on the Ongoing Ethnic Conflict in Manipur.’ The Report draws from the human rights philosophy that atrocities should be documented factually and truthfully, and that one must work towards ensuring accountability and justice for such violations, regardless of the identity of the victim or perpetrator, as a key step towards creating the basis for dialogue and eventually for peace and reconciliation.

Human rights fact-finding is based on the principle of our shared humanity and a commitment to impartial truth-telling, however hard, unpopular or unpalatable it may be. To eschew partisanship is at the heart of human rights philosophy. A human rights report bases itself upon the twin foundations of universal human rights and constitutional guarantees, both of which are premised on the legal assumption that all human life has inherent value. It is the purpose of human rights advocacy to mobilize public opinion against human suffering and demand justice.

However, it is most challenging for a human rights organisation to do a human rights fact-finding when one’s own people are the perpetrators of rights violations. Yet human rights fact-finding at its best does precisely that. Two examples can be cited for this, one historical and one from contemporary times.

While the Gaza genocide has excited global condemnation, the voices within Israel have been relatively muted. In fact, there is actually widespread support inside Israel for its war of annihilation in Gaza. In this context, one must note the courageous report by Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, titled simply, ‘Our Genocide’. Through its documentation, B’Tselem calls the policies of Israel to account. It concludes that Israel has been systematically committing genocide through the acts of mass starvation, bombing, forced displacement, domicide, scholasticide—all committed against the people of Gaza. What is significant is that B’Tselem courageously ‘owns’ this ‘crime of crimes’ and is unsparing in its criticism of Israel and by implication the people of Israel.

The other example harks back to one of the first ‘Fact-Finding Reports’ in India authored by Mahatma Gandhi, on the events which led up to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. On 13th April, 1919, a large number of people had gathered in Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar to protest against the Rowlatt Act. The British Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer ordered firing on the unarmed people who were caught in a narrow corridor unable to escape. Hundreds of people – women, children, elderly and men – were mercilessly slaughtered and thousands seriously injured. Mahatma Gandhi led his first Fact-Finding enquiries into this most abominable slaughter, which eventually became a turning point in the freedom struggle.

While Churchill contended that Jallianwala Bagh stood in ‘sinister and singular isolation’, the Gandhi-authored report sees the massacre as a logical end of British policy in Punjab. One of the significant factors which led to the Jallianwala Bagh firing was the arbitrary arrest of two popular leaders of the independence movement, Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew, followers of Gandhiji’s Satyagraha movement. This event occurred in the background of widespread public opposition in the Punjab to the dreaded Rowlatt Act.

What is not well known is that following the arrest of Satyapal and Saifuddin Kitchlew, on 10th April, 1919, the British security forces shot at protestors, killing many. This led to a series of violent events when enraged crowds attacked British institutions, including banks, killing several British persons. An elderly, British woman missionary who ran schools for Indian students, Marcella Sherwood, was also assaulted.

In his report, even as Gandhiji condemned the Jallianwala Bagh massacre as a ‘crime against humanity’, he was not prepared to whitewash the crimes committed by his own people on uninvolved Britishers. Gandhiji unequivocally wrote that ‘nothing can be held to justify the wanton destruction by the mob of the innocent lives and properties…Miss Sherwood was a devoted Christian teacher and no remarks, however objectionable, that might have been made by Mrs. Easdon, could warrant the proceedings of the mob.’ He saw the murder and mayhem as ‘wild and unworthy acts of the mob’. Gandhiji was prepared to hold his own people to the same standard, that all human life is sacred.

It is an ethical, legal and constitutional imperative to impartially acknowledge the facts, document the reality, stand with the victims, whoever they are, and demand an end to violence and destruction. This we learn from practitioners of human rights from down the ages.

PUCL in the course of its work, has always impartially and without having any axe to grind, documented human rights violations. The documentation is a form of truth-telling and the objective is to open the doors to dialogue, justice and peace. We endeavour to continue to take forward the best traditions of fact-finding as seen in the Gandhiji-authored report on Jallianwala Bagh as well as the report by B’Tselem and continue to raise a voice for justice and accountability.