RIGHTS: Gov’t Apathy to Indians on Death Row in UAE Assailed

By Sujoy Dhar Reprint | | Print |

Sujoy Dhar

NEW DELHI, May 4 2010 (IPS) - Despite the Indian government’s pledge to extend assistance, legal or otherwise, to the 17 Indian migrant workers currently on death row in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), human rights advocates have decried its alleged insensitivity to the prisoners’ plight.

In their almost year-long incarceration, India’s consulate officials in the UAE “hardly visited them,” said a non-governmental organisation called Lawyers for Human Rights International (LFHRI), based in India’s Punjab state, citing charges by the prisoners.

On Mar. 29, 17 Indians, aged 21 to 25, were sentenced to death by a lower court in the Sharjah emirate for allegedly leading a violent mob and murdering a Pakistani following a dispute over stakes in an illegal alcohol business.

The Indian government has not issued any reaction to the prisoners’ allegations.

A two-member LFHRI team who visited the prisoners in mid-April said the prisoners had criticised the Indian consulate for its “callous attitude” toward their condition, alleging that none of its officials paid them a visit until after the controversial judgment was rendered two months ago, generating widespread media attention.

The LFHRI team was composed of general secretary Navkiran Singh and another lawyer, who also met with the lawyers hired by the government after the trial to legally assist the 17 Indian prisoners.

India’s Minister for Overseas Indian Affairs, Vayalar Ravi, said “the death sentence to 17 people at a time is rather shocking, so we have decided to give them the best help possible”. Among others, the cost of providing legal aid to the prisoners would be met from the welfare fund for the Indian diaspora, said Ravi.

LFHRI’s meeting with the 17 prisoners “revealed a very sorry state of affairs,” Singh told IPS. The hapless workers were allegedly tortured, framed and suffered gross miscarriage of justice, said LFHRI in its fact-finding report released on Apr. 20.

“The apathy (toward) the prisoners revealed a total miscarriage of justice, high-handedness, religious bias of the CID (Criminal Investigation Department) branch of police of Sharjah and a totally callous attitude of the Indian consulate towards the Indian citizens who are languishing in the jails of UAE,” LFHRI said in its report.

“They were beaten with golf clubs and plastic pipes and were also given electric shocks. They were made to stand on one foot and not allowed to sleep and asked to make confessions to the crime, which as per their version they never committed,” Singh said.

Singh told IPS there is yet no response either by the Indian or UAE government to the LFHRI report.

LFHRI has demanded immediate action by the Indian consulate to protect the human rights of the prisoners. “The government should move the UAE authorities to ensure that none of the prisoners are tortured in custody and that they can practise their (Sikh) faith in jail,” Singh said.

“They were not allowed to access their religious prayer books and had been forced to keep away from their articles of faith.”

The trial of the Indians was conducted in Arabic, which was translated into Hindi, neither of which the 17 men understood, since they only spoke Punjabi, the main language of Sikhs, one of India’s ethnic groups, to which they belong.

Moreover, they were provided with an Emirati lawyer, who could not speak their native language, rights groups said.

The UAE embassy in India said the death penalty was subject to appeal and cassation by the rule of law “without any interference from parties.”

“We fully trust our legal system and its procedures, and we are sure that it will provide and guarantee a fair trial to the convicted,” added the statement quoted in the Indian daily ‘The Hindu’.

The UAE – a federation of seven emirates in the Arabian Peninsula in south- west Asia – inflicts capital punishment for crimes such as pre-meditated murder, kidnapping, rape and drug trafficking. Eighty percent of its total population consists of migrant workers.

There are about 1.4 million Indians in the UAE, according to the Indian Embassy.

Support for the convicted Indians is also pouring in from Pakistan. Leading human rights group in neighbouring Pakistan, Ansar Burney Trust, said it would fight for the recall of the UAE judgment.

Noted human rights activist Ansar Burney said the NGO, which he chairs, would provide the maximum help possible for the 17 Indians.

“We have no sympathy whatsoever (for) hardened criminals and terrorists, but we are worried as to how, in a single murder case, any court can sentence 17 people,” said Burney, who is also Pakistan’s former federal minister for human rights. He termed the conviction “shocking” and “against justice.”

The LFHRI findings have prompted the New York-based human rights lobby group Amnesty International (AI) to lodge its protest against the penalty.

“This is a mockery of justice. These 17 men have been tortured, forced to confess, and sentenced to death based on a fake video,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, AI’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, in a statement.

“There appears to be a surge in the use of the death penalty in the UAE in 2010,” said AI. “In the month before the 17 Indian nationals were sentenced to death, according to a 22 February article in [UAE capital] Abu Dhabi’s newspaper ‘The National’, at least eight men had been sentenced to death in the UAE.”