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On June 2, 1984, the government of
India shrouded a terrifying veil of secrecy over the ENTIRE
northern Indian state of Punjab! Foreign news reporters were
expelled from the state, and communications with the rest of
humanity severed by the government. This mortifying sequence
of events transpired in a country claiming to be "the world's
largest democracy," and set the stage for what was to follow.
For months, the Government had claimed that
a small group of "terrorists"-- whose "official" number
swelled from 40 before the attack to over 450 in the
succeeding months-- was operating from and hiding out in the
complex. This apparently transpired despite the pronounced
presence of the police, the military, and government spies in
and around the open, easily-accessible Golden Temple complex,
as well as the tapping of all of its phones.
June 3rd was an important religious holiday
for the Sikhs, and thousands had gathered in the city of
Amritsar to worship in the Golden Temple. As many had come
from great distances, numerous pilgrims spent the night at the
Temple complex. Knowing this, the Indian Army began heavy
artillery fire into the complex on the night of the 3rd. This
continued until it moved in during the early hours of the 5th,
thus trapping thousands of innocent Sikh pilgrims: men, women,
and children. Simultaneously, 38 other Gurdwaras (Sikh
Temples) across the state were attacked by the army. What
ensued was a deliberate, cold-blooded massacre by a state of
its own citizens.
Not only were an enormous number of innocent
pilgrims murdered, but the majority were mercilessly
exterminated AFTER the complex had been militarily secured.
The Times of London reported, "Several. . . Sikh militants
killed. . . were shot at point-blank range by troops who first
tied their hands behind their backs, a doctor and police
official said. A Police Superintendent also reported that 'at
least 13 Sikhs were tied and shot by submachine-gun-toting
soldiers'. . . . The sources say that the militants' turbans
had been removed and their hands tied with Yit|. Each of them
had been killed with a single shot fired at their forehead."
Another police official said "a Ytruck| load of ELDERLY Sikhs
who surrendered on the first day of the military operation
were brought to the main city police station and tortured
there by the army. The soldiers removed their turbans, pulled
their hair over their eyes and tied the long hair round their
necks. Then they threw sand in their faces," he said. "The old
men shrieked, but I helplessly watched all this from my office
window."
In addition to the slaughter and torture of
helpless pilgrims, no provision for the wounded Sikhs-- who
were Indian citizens-- was made by the army. The number of
prisoners taken was negligible, as the Indian army obviously
thought it better to eliminate the thousands of people seized,
rather than risk allowing them to reveal the true nature of
the actions committed in the name of the Indian people. No
effort was made to identify them. No relatives were informed.
By failing to turn over the bodies, and cremating them
immediately, the Indian government made sure that no autopsies
could be performed, and no precise body count made. Large
numbers of women and children disappeared during the attack,
and are presumed to have been killed by the Indian Army.
Despite such atrocities, no commission was ever appointed by
the government to delve into this dark episode. It was closed
to the light of truth, being a "military matter." The official
government figure of civilians and "terrorists" killed was
493. However, it is obvious that a government does not keep
track when it slaughters its own people. The number of dead
estimated by the independent group Citizens for Democracy was
8,000. Other human rights activists have asserted that the
number murdered by the State is at least double that figure.
We will never know how many men, women, children, and elderly
died at the hands of their own government.
After securing the premises of the Golden
temple, the soldiers then proceeded to destroy Sikh religious
and historical artifacts kept in a museum in the Golden temple
premises, including centuries old religious manuscripts and
articles belonging to the Sikh prophets. This further provides
evidence that the attack was not the simple anti-terrorist
action the Indian Government feigns it was, but rather a
calculated attempt to strike out specifically at the Sikh
community.
With all news controlled by the government, conditions were
ideal for the planting of fake evidence and the erasure of
unpleasant evidence-- a situation vehemently protested by the
Press Council of India. In the prelude to the attack, numerous
reports by the state-controlled media had filtered into India,
in a calculated ploy to consolidate public opinion behind the
secret plans soon to be unveiled by the Indian government. The
media's venture to generate anti-Sikh sentiment in the nation,
with an avalanche of prevarications prior to Operation
Bluestar, worked well. This can be gauged by the celebrations
of many Hindus after the army's entry into the Golden Temple
complex.
After the siege, the misinformation from the state-controlled
press continued to proliferate. Claims were made, and later
retracted or proven lies, of finding numerous materials
sacrilegious to Sikhs within the complex (drugs and alcohol),
finding jewelry and other valuables, of the Golden Temple
itself not being fired upon (it had over 350 bullet marks),
not to mention grotesque falsehoods about the number of dead.
Taking into account evidence that has
surfaced since the event, it appears undeniable that the
timing of the attack was calculated to cause maximum damage,
casualties, and suffering to the Sikhs. Particularly as the
evidence of exceeding government duplicity has been
discovered, people of conscience around the world have viewed
this not as an attempt to root out a few "terrorists," but as
an assault upon Sikh religion itself. This latter belief
became horrifyingly concretized through Operation Woodrose,
the "mop-up" procedure which followed Bluestar. In this
military operation, which human rights activists have
denounced as "Genocide in practice," army personnel fanned out
across Punjab in an effort to crush the spirit of the Sikh
community by humiliating, torturing, and murdering them in
front of their families and friends.
The political ramifications of Operation
Bluestar become readily visible when one realizes that it was
planned by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi long before it
occurred. It was afterwards learned that army units had been
practicing on a model of the Golden Temple complex months
before the attack. The assault on the Sikhs' center of
religious and political authority was designed to garner votes
from the Hindu majority by "disciplining" a tiny religious
minority of the voting populace, one that was then leading a
powerful, popular, nonviolent protest movement against the
political indiscretions of Indira Gandhi. To erase the
national embarrassment Indira Gandhi suffered from the Sikhs'
airing of their legitimate political grievances, and in
searchi of political gain, countless thousands of Sikhs were
murdered. And no one was held accountable.
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