When Afzal becomes Anand Mohan

"If a Hindu had been convicted in place of Afzal, or if Parliament attack case convict had the name Anand Singh or Anand Mohan, he would have been hanged by the UPA government long back" --- Advani in an election rally during Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections

"We'll hang Afzal if voted to power" --- Vijay Kr Malhotra, BJP's chiefministerial candidate during Delhi assembly election campaigning

Time and again Advani and other BJP leaders have used “Hang Afzal and don’t appease minorities” as a political slogan to portray themselves as harder, stronger, whatever on terror. Advani repeatedly asks the question ‘what could have happened to Afzal had be been a Hindu’. He alleges that appeasement and vote bank politics are coming in the way of government’s decision. 

Now these are serious charges. Does Advani know the consequences of muddying water with allegations and political sloganeering? Why can’t he raise above the characteristic divisive politics of his party? On one hand he alleges minority appeasement and on the other hand he appeals to the emotions of majority community and misleads people on government's inaction in disposal of Afzal's mercy petition.

 

What makes Advani and BJP assume that the general population of Indian muslims (other than Kashmiris) care about Afzal's death sentence? Who told BJP that Indian muslims sympathize with Afzal and his hanging issue matters more than their liveihood concerns? Advani's partymen want all muslims to realise that they are being appeased by the government in Afzal's name by shouting from rooftops? They meant to say that nott hanging Afzal constitutes appeasement but not keeping him in jail?

Lets us look at the facts. There are many apolitical and neutral observers including intelligence experts who believe that there is a possibility of separatists in Kashmir valley turning the Afzal's hanging into a communal flash point to regain their lost ground. Is it necessary to make a martyr out of him when the peace process in J&K is proceeding well with violence levels reaching their lowest in the past decade?

B.Raman, security and intelligence analyst :

Just as there is no conclusive evidence to show that dangerous crime in the US has decreased due to the imposition and execution of the death penalty, there is no conclusive evidence to show that the absence of the death penalty in the European Union countries has created difficulties for their counter-terrorism agencies. Despite the absence of the death penalty, indigenous terrorist organisations in Europe have been withering away one after another— the Baader-Meinhof and the Red Army faction of Germany, the Red Brigade of Italy, the Action Directe of France etc. Even the Irish Republican Army of the UK and the Basque separatists of Spain have been having second thoughts about resorting to terrorism. This was partly because of the firm counter-terrorism policies of the European governments which made it clear to the terrorist organisations that terrorism will not pay and partly because of the collapse of the state-sponsors of terrorism such as the erstwhile USSR, East Germany and Yugoslavia.

The European governments are now facing difficulty due to the increasing activities of the jihadi terrorists as seen in Spain and the UK. Well-informed sections of public opinion and professional counter-terrorism experts are advocating greater powers of detention, search, interrogation, surveillance etc for the police and other agencies to enable them to deal with the jihadi terrorists, but no one is demanding the re-imposition of the death penalty. They feel confident that they they can deal with the situation without he need for the re-introduction of the death penalty.

Death penalty can be particularly counter-productive in the case of jihadi terrorist groups, which glorify acts of terrorism as acts of martyrdom.Deaths at the hands of the state—either during an encounter or a terrorist operation or after a trial— would be projected as acts of martyrdom.

There is another aspect, which needs to be considered in any debate on this issue. The security forces are authorised by law to kill a terrorist or a dangerous criminal in exercise of the right of self-defence. They can kill in order to protect themselves or others, if they reasonably conclude that there is no other way of protecting themselves or others. A dilemma arises in respect of executing an arrested and convicted terrorist because he is being executed as a punishment for what he did in the past and not due to a fear of what he may do in the future. So long as he is in custody serving a life imprisonment, he can no longer kill. What is the point in executing him?

For more on B Raman on Death penalty, Afzal issue :

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20061001&fname=raman&sid=1&pn=1
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20061004&fname=raman&sid=1&pn=1

Afzal is already undergoing a harsh prison term. He played a small role in the attack on Indian parliament but the real masterminds Masood Azhar, the founder of Jaish-e-Muhammad and others are still at large and are taking shelter in Pakistan. Till now all the attempts and demands for his extradition have proved futile. There is no need to explicitly mention the fact that Masood Azhar was escorted to Kandahar by Indian foreign Minister at the dawn of this millennium.

BJP with its rhetoric in the public domain wants everyone to believe that hanging Afzal would eradicate terrorism from the face of India. Whether Capital punishment acts as a deterrent to jehadi terrorists or not is a different question. Afzal's mercy petition addressed to the president of India for commutation of death sentence is pending like many other petitions of the convicts sentenced to death. One wonders why Advani never talks about all pending mercy petitions and the faith of all convicts. Who sat on such petitions for six long years between 1998-2004? He doesn’t know how much time did the earlier governments take to dispose off a single petition?

"Figures with the Union home ministry show that though the apex court has sentenced 50 persons to death in the last 10 years, none of them has yet been hanged. Of the 50 convicts, 32 were sentenced more than five years ago and include high-profile names like Murugan and Santhan, who were part of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination plot."

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Mercy_pleas_of_50_on_death_row_still_pending/articleshow/3409493.cms

Clearly, the purpose of Advani and his party is not anything but politicization of terrorism and emotional blackmailing of people. They would do well to put an end to sloganeering and allow the government to take a final decision on all pending mercy petitions over coming months. It is BJP that should stop playing votebank politics. Is it difficult to understand why Advani spoke of the faith of Afzal and one fictitious Anandmohan while on election campaign trail?