Terrorists cannot be freedom fighters

Kochi, Oct 7: National Human Rights Commissioner, Justice A S Anand, today said that to term a terrorist as a freedom fighter was to insult freedom fighters.

Describing terrorism and fundamentalism as grave threats to human rights in the country, Justice Anand said that to call terrorists as freedom fighters was to ''give an alibi to terrorism''.

''Freedom fighters do not hijack planes, rape women, take children hostage, burn mosques or temples. Terrorists do all this and more and yet get a cloak of freedom fighters from some countries. We have to get rid of these double standards,'' he added.

Delivering the third V R Krishna Iyer National Foundation Lecture on 'Human Rights, Challenges of the 21st Century'' here, Justice Anand said that fundamentalism was another form of terrorism.

However, he cautioned the governments against bending the law while fighting terrorism. ''The rule of law cannot be sacrificed.

This gets defeated if the State itself bends the law,'' he said.

Observing that there was no universally accepted definition of terrorism, Justice Anand said that the United States seemed to think that terrorism was born only on 9/11.

''A selective approach in dealing with terrorism will not work,'' he added.

Talking of other challenges threatending human rights in the country in the 21st century, the NHRC Chairman identified corruption as among the biggest.

Stating that the growing menace of rampant corruption was eating into the vitals of society and posing a big threat to human rights, he called upon the people to adopt ''zero tolerance to corruption''.

''Corruption has always been there. But, what is new is the magnitude and size of corruption. It has spread its tentacles to every sphere of national life. Unless checked, the country will have to pay a very heavy price.'' He said the growing politicisation of public services and criminalisation of politics need to be checked and it was upto the people to change their mindset and not elect those known to be corrupt.

UNI