Violent Deaths and Enforced Disappearances During the Counterinsurgency in Punjab, India: A Preliminary Quantitative Analysis

1. If there is so much data available, why can’t you make claims about the number of people killed by security forces during the Punjab counterinsurgency campaign?

While there are a number of different sources that have collected information about the number of people killed by security forces in Punjab, each one of these sources, or data sets, alone is incomplete and therefore inaccurate. In order to make scientifically defensible estimates of the number of people killed, we need to apply the demographic technique of multiple systems estimation to the available data. This scientific estimation method is used widely in adjusting for undercount in population censuses. In epidemiology, multiple systems estimation (MSE) is used for estimating the incidence of rare diseases from multiple registration lists of diseased people. More recently, multiple systems estimation has been used in large-scale human rights projects to estimate the magnitude of conflict-related mortality.

Multiple systems estimation uses multiple data sets to estimate the size of a population being measured, by modeling the probability that different types of documented individuals in a population are included or excluded from a particular data set. Records in each data set need to be matched against records in all other data sets and assessed as to whether they represent the same or different individuals. From this record matching process, inclusion/exclusion probabilities are estimated and from that scientists can estimate the number of individuals who were never documented by any of the available data sets.

In order to improve the reliability of the estimate of those killed during the Punjab counterinsurgency campaign, Ensaaf and Benetech® are working to collect and organize more data to be incorporated into an MSE analysis in the near future. The next step in our research on Punjab is to match the records from the available data sets together and apply multiple systems estimation to this analysis.

2. Haven’t Punjab Police and government bodies already documented the number of people killed and “illegally cremated?” Why doesn’t this suffice?

No institution or organization has documented the full-scale of lethal violence or “illegal cremations” that occurred during the Punjab counterinsurgency. Further, several issues undermine the credibility of estimates provided by government and security forces.

First, quantitative analyses support qualitative findings that the Punjab Police extrajudicially executed innocent individuals and reported their deaths as encounter killings. Punjab Police released press reports almost daily to local newspapers, detailing the civilians, security forces, and alleged militants killed. Militants were most often reported killed in encounters involving an exchange of gunfire. However, human rights groups have documented hundreds of cases in Punjab where victims were arrested, abducted, or executed by security forces in the presence of witnesses – but then would be reported a few days later as a “suspected militant,” killed in an “encounter” with security forces. These reports suggest that many such reported encounters were falsified. So-called “fake encounters,” in fact, were so prevalent that the practice has been remarked upon by the U.S. State Department and widely acknowledged in the media. Empirical findings from our report are also consistent with qualitative findings that reported encounters were often faked.

Second, the state of Punjab has admitted to forging the identities of over 300 victims of “illegal cremations” in order to protect police collaborators. In February 2006, Director General of Punjab Police S.S. Virk admitted to faking the deaths of over 300 accused militants-turned-police-informers who were then given new identities. Virk’s confession asserted that 300 unidentified bodies of innocent victims were cremated in place of the police collaborators; these victims have yet to be identified by the police.

3. What has been the impact of quantitative studies of human rights violations in other regions?

Quantitative analysis of conflict-related mortality during periods of political conflict has a long history. Since 1991, Benetech’s Human Rights Data Analysis Group (HRDAG) have analyzed killings and other crimes in more than 17 countries in Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.

In Guatemala, HRDAG’s use of multiple systems estimation helped establish that between 1960 and 1996 approximately 200,00 people were killed and disappeared. This analysis found that 94% of victims belonged to the Mayan ethnic group and that 98% of killings and disappearances were attributed to the state. This quantitative analysis, along with qualitative, legal, and historical analysis by Guatemala’s Commission on Historical Clarification (CEH, by its Spanish acronym), contributed to CEH’s official finding that the Guatemalan army committed acts of genocide against the Mayan people.

At the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the trial of former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, HRDAG’s analysis of mortality and migration data helped to clarify the plausibility of explanations by Milosevic of why the conflict sparked a mass exodus of refugees. This analysis showed that the data were inconsistent with Milosevic’s claim that people in the region were fleeing NATO bombing and also inconsistent with Milosevic’s further assertion that people were fleeing atrocities by the Kosovo Liberation Army. HRDAG analysis clarified that there was strong association between acts of ethnic cleansing by the Yugoslav army and the spatial-temporal pattern of conflict-related mortality and conflict-related migration.

In Peru, HRDAG’s analysis, which drew on data collected independently by multiple human rights organizations and the Peruvian Truth Commission (CVR, by its Spanish acronym), found that approximately 69,000 people were killed during the 1985–2000 civil war. HRDAG’s estimate of the total number of people killed in the twenty-year conflict between government forces and Maoist insurgents more than doubled earlier, incomplete estimates. The analysis also revealed a stark difference in the way that people living outside the capital region were affected by the conflict, challenging the way many Peruvians understood their history. For example, the department of Ayacucho, in the Andean mountains, accounted for a total of 38% of the total estimated deaths throughout the conflict. Prior to the work by HRDAG and CVR, Peruvians had understood that most of the conflict had occurred in the Andean highlands. What most observers did not understand was the scale of disproportionality across space: there are more than fifty times as many people in Lima as Ayacucho, yet HRDAG and CVR found that there were approximately six times more killings in Ayacucho than in Lima. The relative risk of being killed in the civil war was more than 300 times greater for someone in Ayacucho than for someone in Lima.

4. What impact do these findings have in the Punjab context? Why did you undertake this study?

We undertook this analysis in order to use systematic and verifiable quantitative research to clarify the historical record and reduce the deniability of the perpetrators, allowing for institutional responsibility. To date, this study is the most comprehensive quantitative analysis of lethal violence during the counterinsurgency in Punjab. It brings together available data compiled by the National Human Rights Commission, the Tribune newspaper, official state records, and local human rights organizations and initiatives. The available data have been analyzed using reproducible scientific methods and increase our understanding of “who did what to whom?,” “where?,” and “when?.”

The findings of this report challenge the plausibility of the state’s explanation and justification for mass cremations and “encounters” with alleged militants, as well as their claim that human rights violations were isolated incidents during the counterinsurgency. By using quantitative methods, this report demonstrates the implausibility of lethal human rights violations being “random” or “minor aberrations” as claimed by Indian officials. The findings further indicate that the intensification of coordinated counterinsurgency operations in the early 1990s was accompanied by a shift in state violence from targeted enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions to large-scale and systematic lethal human rights violations, accompanied by mass “illegal cremations.” Further, the report lays the foundation for additional research into specific areas of what happened during the conflict, who was disappeared, and who is responsible for the violations that occured.

5. What are the future prospects for this work on the Punjab counterinsurgency?

Two main areas of future research into the questions investigated in this study include extending the analysis of existing data by matching and merging multiple, independent datasets. Additional collection of data on enforced disappearances, extrajudicial executions, encounter killings, and “illegal cremations” throughout Punjab is also needed. Together with qualitative data, our findings will provide evidence of the true magnitude and patterns of violence throughout Punjab, contributing to the debate about the impact of counterinsurgency strategies on essential human rights.

6. How will this report help clarify the historical record?

To date, state authorities in India have dismissed allegations concerning human rights violations during the counterinsurgency as “minor aberrations” and “random” events. This report brings together all of the currently available empirical evidence and shows that enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions by the state were neither “minor aberrations” nor “random” events. Rather, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions were committed on a large-scale in Amritsar district and there is evidence showing that these acts spread to the other districts of Punjab as the state’s counterinsurgency operations intensified. Further, the pattern of enforced disappearances and extrajudicial executions is systematic and not consistent with the hypothesis that these were purely random events.

This report brings new evidence to light contradicting the state’s position that its policies and practices did not result in large-scale human rights violations. This report also complements existing legal and qualitative analyses on human rights violations in Punjab during the counterinsurgency and increases the quality and quantity of evidence available to the National Human Rights Commission and Supreme Court of India. This analysis clarifies the facts surrounding historical events that can help hold perpetrators accountable and develop appropriate institutional reforms of the security sector to ensure that these violations to not reoccur.

7. How would this report help bring the perpetrators to justice?

This report, and future analyses which may arise out of this analysis, aim to raise the standards of evidence that the Supreme Court of India and National Human Rights Commission use in their proceedings on justice and accountability for mass human rights violations in Punjab during the counterinsurgency. By combining large-scale, empirical data and reproducible, scientific research methods, this work narrows the uncertainty around what happened during the conflict and reduces the scope for deniability by perpetrators.

8. Do the families of the killed and disappeared support this analysis?

Our work is primarily motivated by the expressed need from survivors of the Punjab counterinsurgency to seek justice for the human rights abuses perpetrated by security forces. Dara Singh speaks for the wishes of many survivors for truth and justice:

The police murdered both of my sons, and they won’t even admit that they did something wrong. They call my sons terrorists! The police are the terrorists.…. The government should also give us copies of their records relating to the murder of my sons, so we can figure out what really happened.

9. Are human rights activists in Punjab targeted for reprisal by security forces?

During the main period of conflict in Punjab, human rights defenders were targeted for their work exposing the human rights violations of security forces. In January 1995, Jaswant Singh Khalra released official municipal cremation grounds records establishing that security forces in Punjab had “disappeared” and then secretly cremated thousands of Sikhs as unidentified/unclaimed bodies as part of their counter-insurgency operations. In September 1995, Punjab police officers abducted Khalra and illegally detained and tortured him for nearly two months before killing him in late October 1995. In October 2007, five police officers were sentenced to life in prison for the crime.

Violent conflict ended in 1995, and human rights activists have not been targeted in the past decade. However, the lasting effects of the counterinsurgency have not gone away. Indian security forces commit human rights abuses throughout the country with the knowledge that there is little chance of being held accountable. This analysis is a first step towards clarifying the historical record and reducing the deniability of the perpetrators, allowing for institutional responsibility and the end of impunity.