THERE is still an ongoing debate in the US and in some key European countries on the question of the 2002 Gujarat riots and the role of the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate in the bloodletting. There are signs that that Washington, London and Berlin are already mellowing in their attitude towards Narendra Modi, but civil society in those countries is reluctant to give the Gujarat chief minister a clean chit In the first week of April, a US congressional panel — the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission (TLHRC) — has started hearings on religious freedom in India. Many witnesses from India testified before the commission. The vice chairman of the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, Katrina Lantos Swett, one of the panel’s leading witnesses, told the media that like many of her fellow citizens she was concerned over a Modi led government coming to power in Delhi. “Many religious minority communities fear religious freedom will be jeopardised if the BJP wins and the Gujarat chief minister, Narendra Modi, becomes the PM,” she told the media in Washington. A PARALLEL IN INDONESIA But the BJP’s candidate for the prime minister’s job is not the only political personality on the world stage aspiring to lead his country and at the same time being accused of human rights violations. In Indonesia, Prabowo Subianto, who is accused of serious human rights violations, is seeking to become the president of the world’s third biggest democracy and most populous Muslim nation. There are about 80 per cent Muslims but there is also a sizeable Christian and Hindu minority in the Indonesian archipelago. Like in the Indian subcontinent, fundamentalist forces have been active in fostering sectarian strife in Indonesia also. The Indonesian religious affairs minister, Suryadharma Ali, has even defended attacks on minority Muslim sects, saying that he understands the anger of the majority Sunni community. Prabowo is a former Special Forces commander and a son in law of the former Indonesian dictator, General Suharto. Indonesia’s National Human Rights Commission had recommended in 2006 that Prabowo, a retired general, be prosecuted for the abductions of pro-democracy activists in the late 1990s as Suharto’s authoritarian rule was entering its last days. He has also been accused of presiding over the killings of activists in East Timor when it was under Indonesian occupation and the deaths of over a thousand civilians and the rapes of 168 women in state orchestrated riots in May 1998. The central government in Jakarta, which continues to be dominated by the military, with retired generals donning civilian clothes and becoming heads of state, has refused to order an enquiry into the charges against Prabowo. The current president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who has been in office since 2004, is also a former army general. Western officials have been so far refusing to establish official contacts with Prabowo, citing his human rights record. The US has denied him a visa to visit. American officials, however, have not openly specified their reason for doing so. The US and Indonesian militaries have been extremely close since the overthrow of President Sukarno in 1965 and the bloody purge of over a million Indonesians, suspected of having leftist leanings or affiliations. An acclaimed documentary fill The Act of Killing based on the 1965 genocide, released in 2012, has once again brought one of the worst genocides of the 20th century back into international focus. But it has left Indonesian authorities unmoved. They have so far refused to open an enquiry into the mass murders that occurred in 1965 and 1966. US, EU MELLOWING TOWARDS PRABOWO The military, which masterminded the killings, was advised at the time by US intelligence agencies. Indonesia in 1965 was a precursor to the CIA supervised overthrow of democratic governments in Chile in 1973 and other countries, where the Left was influential in government. The Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI) was the second biggest in Asia, after the Chinese Communist Party, before its physical decimation in the mid-sixties. The PKI continues to be banned in the country which is paraded as a democratic success story in the West. There are indications that American officials are having second thoughts on Prabowo’s candidature. He, for one, will ensure continuity in the country’s foreign policy, including strong security linkages with Washington. Prabowo, coming from the military establishment, will also have a strong interest in ensuring that inconvenient truths about 1965 and the massacres that occurred later on during the long reign of Suharto are never revealed. The year 2015 will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1965 killings. The Indonesian Commission on Human Rights had ruled in 2012 that the killings presided over by General Suharto were a gross violation of human rights and had demanded a criminal enquiry. The government failed to respond. In India, the Obama administration will be having a new envoy in place as soon as a new government takes over in two months time in Delhi. The current American ambassador, Nancy Powell, has chosen to retire. The veteran career diplomat has not given any reason for her decision though there was media speculation that the Obama administration wanted her out. She had reportedly had a frosty meeting with the BJP prime ministerial candidate in February. Her precipitate departure was also related to the controversy related to the deportation of Indian diplomat, Devyani Khobragade. This is one of the rare issues on which the BJP is in total support of the UPA government. America’s ambassadors posted to India had declined to meet with the Gujarat chief minister for the last nine years after the US State Department had revoked Modi’s visa in 2005 for his alleged role in the 2002 communal riots. The EU had also for long been refusing a visa to the Gujarat chief minister for his alleged role in the 2002 pogroms. Now, seeing the straws in the wind, both Washington and Brussels seem to be mellowing towards Modi. Just like Modi, Prabowo too is seen as very business friendly and as an efficient administrator by the Indonesian elite and his western admirers. He is the leader of the Great Indonesia Movement Party which has 15 million members. The “new political realities,” as a western diplomat put it, may force Washington to have a rethink on the issue of granting a visa to Prabowo, like it did in the case of Modi. US & THE HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATORS But unlike Modi, Prabowo is not a front runner at the moment in the presidential elections that are scheduled to be held in July. The odd on favourite for the job at this juncture is Joko Widodo, or “Jokowi” as he is popularly called. Jokowi is cast more in the mould of the Aam Aadmi Party leader, Arvind Kejriwal. As the governor of Jakarta, he has made his reputation in tackling issues connected with the common man and is a strong anti-corruption crusader. Jokowi has the support of the main opposition party — the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) led by Meghawati Sukarnoputri, the daughter of the charismatic nationalist leader Sukarno who was the first president of the Republic. For Jokowi to be able to formally register for the presidency, he has to be nominated by a party which has more than 25 percent of the popular votes or 20 percent of seats in the parliament. The PDI-P is expected to get the required numbers in the legislative elections held on April 9. Pollsters are giving the party 37 percent of the vote. Prabowo’s party is expected to poll around 13 percent and come third in the parliamentary elections. Washington has, anyway, been playing up human rights and related issues only when it suits its strategic goals. In recent years, the Obama administration has backed the military takeover in Egypt and turned a blind eye to the killings and large scale arrests of civilians there. President Barack Obama was in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia in late March. This is his third official visit to the country where all political activity is banned. In its latest edict, the Saudi government has gone to the extent of classifying all atheists as “terrorists.” Before that it had classified the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist organisation,” following in the footsteps of the Egyptian government. The Saudi government has been in the forefront of the moves to stem the democracy wave in the Arab world. In Kenya, the country’s current president, Uhuru Kenyatta, won in the presidential elections last year despite being indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) at The Hague on charges of being complicit in the inter-ethnic bloodletting that followed after the 2007 general elections. Kenya’s vice president, William Ruto, is on trial on similar charges at The Hague. Like in Gujarat in 2002, more than a thousand people were killed in the violence surrounding the elections. The two Kenyan politicians skilfully utilised the ethnic polariswation that resulted from the carnage to ride into power. Kenyatta, who belongs to the majority Kikuyu ethnic group, and Ruto, who is a Kalenjin, the second biggest ethnic group, were on opposite sides in the 2007 elections but after they were indicted by the ICC, they joined hands politically and ran on the same ticket to power. With the electorate voting mainly on the basis of their ethnicity, their victory had become a foregone conclusion. COLONIAL ATTITUDE, DOUBLE STANDARDS Sudan’s president, Omar al Bashir, has been indicted by the ICC on war crimes charges stemming from the strife in the Darfur region in the last decade. That charge, according to most African observers, was a politically motivated one, as the West has been targeting the government in Sudan since the nineties. In Rwanda, President Paul Kagame, who is a regional ally of the West, has not been targeted despite mounting evidence of human rights violations against him. African leaders have accused the western leaders of adopting a colonial attitude towards the continent and adopting double standards. President Robert Mugabe had asked his fellow African leaders to boycott the recent Europe-Africa summit in Brussels, citing the colonial attitude of their European counterparts. The EU has imposed travel bans on prominent Zimbabwean politicians belonging to the ruling party. President Mugabe and his wife were on the list; later the Zimbabwean president was given a waiver for a one time visit but a visa was denied to his wife. Mugabe has also been critical of the ICC, saying that it is unfairly targeting African leaders and that it should be George W Bush and Tony Blair who should be facing an international war crimes tribunal for the war in Iraq. South African president, Jacob Zuma, was one leader who did not bother to attend the summit in Brussels. He had commented that “African rulers are looked on as subjects” by their European counterparts. Kenya’s president, however, chose to be present at the EU summit. He was granted a temporary waiver from appearing before the ICC. Kenya is also a strong ally of the West and in all probability, he will not have to face the tribunal while in office despite the ICC stating that his trial will resume in October this year. The trial has already been postponed thrice. Witnesses are either being stopped from testifying or are now giving false evidence. The Kenyan president and vice president are saying that the charges against them are “politically motivated.” The African Union (AU) wants all the cases against the continent’s leaders to be dropped. Kenya’s foreign minister, Amina Mohammed, told the media that the ICC should wait till the president and the vice president complete their terms. “In advanced countries, sitting presidents are not hauled before the courts,” she said. Being elected to a high office, whether on the African or Asian continent, has many benefits these days, including being unanswerable for human rights violations and other atrocities.