Landmark Inquiries: Well Done Israel & India!
A few high and mighty persons in Israel and India may be quaking in their boots following the inquiries conducted in their countries by an 81-year-old retired Israeli judge and an Indian woman police officer respectively.
Mr Eliyahu Winograd has set a “shining example of how to conduct a genuine, fearless, and plainspoken inquiry” into a government failure during Lebanon war. While Ms Geetha Johri conducted an inquiry in a similar fashion highlighting the “collusion of State (Gujarat) government” in India in the killing of innocents persons.
Such examples highlight that only those countries are true and functioning democracies who have an inner vitality, and a system in place, to cleanse their own clogged arteries (and correct serious aberrations/mistakes), and work towards ensuring justice and fair play.
Interestingly, both Winograd and Johari were deputed by their respective governments to conduct the inquiries. (Doubts were expressed by some about the independence these two would have when they began their inquiries).
(Justice, retired, Eliyahu Winograd. photo courtesy Motti Kimche)
To read in detail a news report about Eliyahu Winograd’s path-breaking inquiry in Israel please click here…
Excerpts:
“Asked by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to probe the country’s ’second Lebanon war’ last summer, he issued an interim verdict on April 30 (2007) which required no translation from the mandarin code of euphemism. Mr. Olmert was, said Mr. Winograd, guilty of ‘a severe failure’ of judgment, rushing into a ‘hasty’ war with no clear plan, setting ‘overambitious and unobtainable goals.’
“Others were at fault but, as Prime Minister, Mr. Olmert bore ’supreme responsibility.’ Short of handing the Prime Minister a revolver, Mr. Winograd could not have been harsher.
“Israel is shaking from the shock of it, but it should also allow itself a pang of pride in the Winograd process. Handpicked by Mr. Olmert himself, this government inquiry was assumed to lack the independence of a state probe staffed by supreme court judges.
“But Mr. Winograd and his team were nobody’s patsies: instead they dared to speak uncomfortable truth to arrogant power. Israel’s boast that it is the only democracy in the Middle East is often met with a snort.
“But this exercise has shown that — at least within its own borders — Israel is capable of a democratic accountability entirely absent in its region. Imagine for a moment a panel of Syrian wise men or Egyptian elders delivering a similar message to Bashar Assad or Hosni Mubarak. They could expect to receive not plaudits, as Mr. Winograd has, but at best a lengthy spell in prison.”
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To read the news report about the historic inquiry conducted by Ms Geetha Johri in the face of obstructions and dangers, please click here…
(Ms Geetha Johri, Inspector-General of Police)
Excerpts:
“The Geetha Johri interim reports painstakingly put together the jigsaw pieces that show the cold-blooded and gruesome murders of three persons in Gujarat — of Sohrabuddin Sheikh in a fake ‘encounter’ by the police on November 26, 2005, of his wife Kausarbi a few days later, and another fake ‘encounter’ death of Tulsiram Prajapati, an associate of Sohrabuddin and key witness in the case, on December 28, 2006.
“The four interim reports of the Inspector-General of Police build up a chilling picture, bit by bit, of the involvement of senior police officers of Gujarat and Rajasthan in the murders that were sought to be passed off as ‘encounter’ deaths of hardened criminals and terrorists who had a plan to kill Chief Minister Narendra Modi.”
The news report points out the complicity of top politicians and police officers.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s tourist visa was revoked by the Bush administration in 2005 stating that US rules forbid foreign government officials who are “responsible for or directly carried out, at any time, particularly severe violations of religious freedom” from being eligible for a visa.
