Diplomacy: Repatriation of Prisoners;Freedom at Last

One of the outcomes of the bus diplomacy is that Indians and Pakistanis serving time in each other's jails will be released according to international norms.

It wasn't enough to just hear the details, Salim Ahmed had to see it for himself. Feigning illness, the 45-year-old got himself admitted to hospital where he could watch the live telecast of Atal Bihari Vajpayee's bus journey to Pakistan. "Wazir-e-azam ki bus ne hamare murda jismon mein jaan dal di (The prime minister's bus journey has breathed life into our living corpses)," says Ahmed, one of 50-odd Indians incarcerated in the dark, dank cells of the Kot Lakhpat prison near Lahore. Ahmed has spent four years there, imprisoned and tortured on suspicion of spying for India.

For the hundreds of Indians and Pakistanis imprisoned in each other's countries, the February bus diplomacy held out a tenuous strand of hope. For 57 such prisoners -- 43 Pakistanis and 14 Indians -- March fulfilled those hopes. Last week at the Wagah border -- where Vajpayee had been welcomed by Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif -- India and Pakistan exchanged civilian prisoners in the presence of officials from both sides, the first major repatriation exercise between the two countries since 1991.

THE NOWHERE MEN

The root cause why hundreds of Pakistani nationals languish in Indian jails lies in the Foreigners (Internment) Order, 1962, which decrees that a Pakistan national will remain interned even after the completion of sentence till repatriation. The order is based on the premise that Pakistan is a hostile country.
Most of those arrested have either strayed across the border accidentally or deliberately or overstayed their visa. A major stumbling block to speedy repatriation -- detentions range from a few months to several years -- is verifying the antecedents and nationality of those arrested. Delays in consular access, a result of poor relations between the two neighbours, leads to cases piling up. Often the illiterate and poor internees give addresses that are not traceable. "Those Pakistani internees whose identities are not established are disowned by their own government," says Amritsar Central Jail Superintendent Jagjit Singh Shinh. And the prison then becomes their home.
No doubt, similar legal procedures are the reason why so many Indians land up in Pakistani jails.

"I had given up hope of ever returning to my country," says Sadhu Ram of Kapurthala. An illegal migrant caught in Iran, he was pushed across the Pakistani border where he was sentenced to prison for a month: he spent five years there. "It is like a second birth," he says. Sadhu Ram is not being overemotional. Whether it is for spying, overstaying the visa limit or crossing the border accidentally, Indians and Pakistanis unlucky enough to be caught by the security forces have almost always been imprisoned indefinitely. It's like locking them up and throwing away the key -- cases of prisoners on both sides of the border disappearing in each other's jails are legion.

According to an Indian diplomat, both sides have now "agreed to apply international norms in dealing with such persons". Which means that after a detainee, who has been tried and convicted for an offence, completes his sentence, "his embassy will be asked to produce his papers and he will be repatriated within two months". The two sides have also agreed to work out a formal mechanism for getting consular access for prisoners as well as freeing them in a reasonable time frame after they have served their sentence. To this end, a committee headed by the ministers of state in their foreign ministries has been asked to come up with proposals.

However, given that mutual suspicion runs deep, adhering to the numbers game in the exchange of prisoners -- one for one -- would be an overriding compulsion on both sides. Claims and counterclaims about the number of their nationals in each other's prisons notwithstanding, the exact figure for Indian prisoners in Pakistani jails and vice-versa remains as hazy as the approach to repatriation.

India claims that more than 400 Indians are confined in Pakistan, including an unknown number of POWs from the 1965 and 1971 wars. Pakistan only acknowledges 129 of them and denies the presence of any POWs. Those charged and sentenced for spying apparently do not figure in the official list.

But the Indians repatriated recently testify to the presence of a "large number" of Indians in Pakistani jails. Those released have brought back horrifying stories of torture and sub-human conditions under which they are kept. Three of the 14 lucky Indians have no memory left about their families or their domiciles in India.

"Am I in India?" asks 45-year-old Ashok Kumar of Sonepat, sitting forlornly in a transit camp in Amritsar's Central Jail a day after he was repatriated along with his three sons, Ajay (10), Amar (7) and Samundar (4). After a quarrel with his wife he had headed for Afghanistan but without any valid papers for transiting through Pakistan. He and his children were detained for three years. They are now unsure as to where they will go. Kumar is uncertain about his wife's whereabouts. All that the children can mumble is : "Saab, hamein kab chhodoge? (Sir, when will you release us?)".

Such stories abound on both sides. There is no doubt that both sides have used these hapless people as pawns in their diplomatic games. Tellingly, the cost factor has been significant in speeding up the repatriation of Pakistani internees who, according to Indian prison authorities, are a huge drain on their department's meagre resources.

"Now that the slate has been cleaned," says a Punjab Home Department official, "speedy repatriation is a top priority for both India and Pakistan." He points out that the 40-odd Pakistani nationals in Punjab jails would get consular access in Jaipur next month as a prelude to their repatriation. Much of the spadework was done during the visit last week of the second secretary (political) from Pakistan to the Amritsar jail. Diplomats say that both sides are determined to resolve this "humanitarian question in a humane way". But, given the tangled history of relations between the two subcontinental neighbours, it may be too soon to pronounce the final verdict.