Model Answer Favoring National Sovereignty
International monitors can't vote in next year's election. The political future of Congress rests on Hindu support, not the good will of Christian outsiders. Hindu nationalists in the opposition have already mobilized outrage at the government's sympathy for minorities and acceptance of foreign investment. The Indian people strongly favor majority rights and economic self reliance; national pride rather than international approval wins votes and secures Congress political base. Party allies in Punjab have been mercilessly flailed by international critics. Congress (I) must not betray their support by inviting more attack from abroad.
India's human rights critics are Western elites of former colonial powers and Pakistani enemies hostile to India's vital national interests. After employing preventive detention to delay India's independence and using similarly extreme measures in Northern Ireland, How can Britain complain? Perhaps British nationals who object simply cannot accept that India is now independent. Americans have no basis to fault India's counterinsurgency methods. When challenged by the confederacy in the 1860s, the U.S. federal government used extreme measures to prevent secession.
Cooperation with the UN and NGOs simply produces more criticism. At the 1995 session of the UN Commission on Human Rights, politically motivated adversaries from Pakistan led the attempt to censure India and send a fact-finding mission to Kashmir. India's government allowed a four member mission by the International Commission of Jurists to visit Kashmir with disastrous consequences. In addition to finding excesses by security forces, the British jurist who authored the final ICJ report asserted that Muslims in Kashmir have a legal right to self determination.15
The government also allowed the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to visit Kashmir and Punjab and permitted Amnesty International to conduct a mission in Bombay's prisons. Both criticized our government. North Korea receives far less public embarrassment by flatly refusing admission to any international human rights monitors. Why assist India's critics to obtain information and sit in judgment? International journalists have free access to Kashmir and Punjab, and the government need not open the doors further to human rights zealots who have pre-judged the India's guilt.
The Geneva Conventions were drafted to regulate conflicts between independent states not the type of civil disorder afflicting India. Acceptance of ICRC jurisdiction in Kashmir opens the door to further demands for a self-determination plebiscite under international supervision. India must not yield an inch of recognition that its territorial integrity is subject to supranational authority. National courts and the Human Rights Commission have ample authority to investigate allegations of misconduct.
Fears of economic sanctions are grossly exaggerated. Western corporations put profit far ahead of human rights. The U.S. government has ignored China's systematic violation of rights in order to secure a share of that huge market. After the terrorist bombings in Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center in New York, Americans appreciate the need for effective counterinsurgency measures. India's inexpensive labor and growing consumer population remains highly attractive. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown recently conducted a trade mission; human rights was not an issue. In any case, India must not sell its soul by heeding the dictates of Western multinational corporations.
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