Mechanisms Of State Terrorism And State Repression

Atty. Sebastian Pelliserry

India

 Presented before the Public Forum of the IAPL 3^rd Congress

Davao City, Philippines; 14 October 2006

 

 

State by its very definition is authoritarian and terrorist and repression is an indispensable part of terrorism.  The state is always an instrument of oppression.  It is inherent in the existence of the state.  That is exactly why Karl Marx spoke about the withering of the state.  

 

I come from a city called Mumbai.  It has 14 million.  Out of 14 million, 7-8 million people stay in slums where they don’t have basic facilities.  They have no electricity, no water. They don’t have sufficient food to eat, or sufficient clothes to wear.  It rains 3-4 moths per year.  People have to stand at night.  Why don’t they revolt. Why don’t they go to the mansions where they have all of the facilities and use those air conditions, the food there, the clothes there.  There is only one reason:  there is a state.  They have a military.  

 

This is a sense of terrorism.  The state terrorizes them to keep them in slums otherwise they would take over.  It is a city which has enormous wealth.  It can feed 40 million. But there’s a system that keeps the state terrorize them into submission. 

 

There was a  man in Punjab which is one of the provinces of India. Several things happened.  A man was arrested in Bombay.  He was the director general for border security forces of India. Which is a paramilitary group.  The charge is that he was one of the most powerful people in India.  Not an ordinary person. He was taken to a police station, not to a jail, but the station where there was only one room.

 

They first stripped him and pushed him inside the room.  There was no cot, no sheet.  It was winter.  He could either stand in the room freezing cold or could sit on the cemented floor, or he could lie down on the floor.  One day they kept him in that room.  The second day they brought an insane person and also locked him in that same room.  He was insane.  He started to urinate and defecate in the same room and throw them around.  The room was never opened.  The food was just passed to him where there was an insane person who dirtied the whole place.  They also gave him electric shock to his genitals. 

 

This worked to demoralize him and to crush him, not just mentally but physically as well.  They may not have succeeded in it, but they tried.  This is how the state functions.  This is how they function in Iraq, Abu Graib.  They terrorize people and oppress people.  The statement made my Musharif, President of Pakistan, after the attack America declared war on terror, which is actually the war of terror. They contacted Musharif and said either you are with us or you are against us.  Among the Muslim nations, Pakistan is the most powerful.  There is no other nation that can match them. 

 

He said it in the presence of Bush himself, and Bush didn’t deny it.  If you don’t, we’ll bomb you to stone age.  This was said to Musharif, the president of Pakistan and he disclosed it in the presence of President Bush.  That was terrorism that terrorizes the world into submission.  This is not an isolated instance.  This is the general policy of the United States of America.  When Ronald Reagan came to power, he said the core of foreign American policy was fighting terrorism, international terrorism.  In those days, terrorism meant communism, not radical Islamic.  He launched an intensity war against Nicaragua, it is as big as this city.  America used its might to fight against this small country because it had a government which is communist. 

 

The world court of justice declared America as a terrorist state.  And asked America to pay heavy reparations. But they didn’t.  They dismissed the order of the world court with absolute contempt and intensifie