On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the death of Jaswant Singh Kharla CAP Freedom of Conscience, United Sikhs, Khalra Mission Organization and the author of the book The Valiant – Jaswant Singh Khalra Gurmeet Kaur made a statement to the UN during the 45th session of the Human Rights Council.
According to the president of CAP LC,
“it is time for the truth to be revealed and for the families of the victims to know the truth about the fate of their loved one” and continued saying that “it is the duty of the Indian authorities to shed light on this crime against humanity”. (Their full statement can be seen here)
Jaswant Singh Kharla’s crime is to have uncovered, according to his book
“thousands of state-enforced disappearances, illegal detentions, custodial killings, and mass cremations of the Sikhs under government’s orders, which constitute the Sikh genocide”.
After its discovery Jaswant Singh Kharla took as his mission to stop the “government’s tyranny” by exposing and “holding it accountable through legal means”.
On January 16, 1995, he made public evidence of 3,100 illegal cremations of disappeared persons in just three crematoria from one out of the then thirteen districts in Punjab. He estimated there were a total of 25,000 cremations of disappeared persons throughout the state.
On September 6, 1995, Jaswant Singh Khalra himself was abducted in broad daylight, tortured in illegal custody for 52 days before being shot dead; his body dismembered and dumped into the very canal that was used to dispose other bodies that he had set out to find.
Author Gurmeet Kaur who wrote The Valiant – Jaswant Singh Khalra said:
“Twenty-five years later, we hope the government will not obstruct efforts to document the gravity of the state-sponsored genocide before nature takes its course and the aging witnesses and parents of the disappeared die”.
