June 8, 1995 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks E 1185

since 1984. In November 1984, after Sikh

bodyguards assassinated Prime Minister

Indira Gandhi, Congress party and government sponsored rioting broke out in cities

all over India. 40,000 Sikhs lost their lives,

20,000 Sikhs in New Delhi alone. Sikhs were

pulled out of shops, homes, trains and buses,

and burned alive. For three days, television

stations throughout India, all State controlled, aired the simple message, Blood for

Blood.

Indian newspapers recently reported that

25,000 bodies have been cremated and listed

as unclaimed by the Indian regime since 1990.

In Amritsar district alone, over 6000 bodies

were listed as unidentified. This is one of 13

districts in Punjab. A mass grave which held

the remains of 400 Cambodians shook the

world, as it should have. Why does the mass

cremation of 25,000 in Punjab, Khalistan, get

ignored? These Sikhs were brutally tortured

and murdered by the Indian police, then cremated to hide the evidence.

Sikhs are not the only victims. Indian ‘‘democracy’’ has murdered over 150,000 Christians in Nagaland since 1947, over 43,000 Muslims in Kashmir since 1988, and tens of thousands of Assamese, Manipuris, and other

tribal people. According to the State Department’s 1994 report on human rights, between

1991 and 1993 the Indian regime paid over

41,000 cash bounties to police officers for

killing Sikhs. Many people simply ‘‘disappear.’’ It is the great unknown holocaust.

These atrocities are part of a pattern of oppression by the corrupt Indian regime. According to the Indian magazine Sunday, for

every case of human rights violations that is

reported, another thousand go unreported.

I am sure that you know what happened to

Simranjit Singh Mann. On December 26,

Sardar Mann made a speech calling for a

peaceful, democratic, nonviolent movement

to liberate Khalistan. He asked the 50,000

Sikhs in his audience to raise their hands if

they agreed with him. All 50,000 did so. For

this blatant act of free speech, Mann was arrested under the so-called ‘‘Terrorist and

Disruptive Activities Act’’ (TADA). Although the regime has repealed TADA, and

despite a Supreme Court ruling that asking

for Khalistan is not a crime, Mann remains

in a windowless cell almost five months after

he was arrested. This is typical of the kind of

tyranny practiced against the Sikh nation

by the Indian regime.

According to the government of India, all

Sikhs are terrorists. The regime has even

outlawed the Sikh baptismal ceremony of

amrit. Most Sikhs have a friend or relative

who has been imprisoned, tortured or killed

by police, ostensibly because they are terrorists. This is the myth that justifies the Indian government’s bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing. The world is beginning to realize that Sikh terrorism is a myth. On November 6, the Indian newspaper Hitavada reported that the Indian regime paid the late

governor of Punjab, Surendra Nath, $1.5 billion to foment terrorism in Punjab and

Kashmir, then blame it on ‘‘Sikh militants.’’

Again, Indian ‘‘democracy’’ is exposed.

This oppression must stop. On October 7,

1987, the Sikh nation declared its independence from India, forming the separate country of Khalistan. Sikhs ruled Punjab from

1710 to 1716 and from 1765 to 1849. Punjab belongs to the Sikhs. Sikhs own 95 percent of

the land in Punjab, Khalistan. Over twothirds of the population of Punjab is Sikh.

No Sikh has ever signed the Indian constitution. In the Indian-run elections in Punjab,

Khalistan, in February 1992, 96 percent of the

Sikhs there did not vote, according to India

Abroad. India’s occupation of Khalistan is

destroying our homeland. The Sikh Nation

has made its desire for freedom clear. We

want our country back. We want to live in

peace, and we want to live apart from India

in a free, democratic society.

Every day the world is exposed to the brutality of India’s occupation of Khalistan. In

May 1994, Human Rights Watch/Asia and

Physician for Human Rights released a report entitled Dead Silence: The Legacy of

Abuses in Punjab. The report quotes a police

officer as saying, ‘‘Once I became a police officer in Punjab, I realized that torture is

used routinely. During my five years with

the Punjab police, I estimate 4,000 to 5,000

were tortured at my police station alone.’’

Another policeman was quoted as saying

that 500 people were killed at his police station in five years. At least 200 of these torture centers currently operate in Indian-occupied Khalistan.

In 1947, when India achieved independence,

three nations were to receive power. The

Hindus got India, the Muslims got Pakistan,

and the Sikh Nation was to receive a state of

our own. But the Sikh leadership at the time

made the critical mistake of taking our

share with India on the solemn promises of

Gandha and Nehru that Sikhs would enjoy

‘‘the warm glow of freedom’’ in Punjab and

that no law affecting Sikh rights would be

passed without Sikh consent. Almost immediately, those promises were broken and the

repression of our people began.

India is not one nation. It is a conglomeration of many nations thrown together for administrative purposes by the British. It is

the last vestige of colonialism. With 18 official languages, India is doomed to disintegrate just as the former Soviet Union did.

Freedom for Khalistan and all the nations

living under Indian occupation is inevitable.

The Sikh Nation’s demand for an independent Khalistan is irrevocable, irreversible,

and nonnegotiable. But we are willing to sit

down with the Indian regime anytime to demarcate the boundaries of Khalistan. It is

time for India to recognize the inevitable

and withdraw from Khalistan.

An independent Khalistan will help make

South Asia nuclear-free. Punjab, Khalistan,

produces 73 percent of India’s wheat reserves

and 48 percent of its rice reserves. As a country where it takes three days’ pay to buy a

box of cereal, India will have to sign the

Non-Proliferation Treaty because it needs

food. Once India disarms, Pakistan will have

no reason not to do so as well. Khalistan will

sign the NPT and a 100-year friendship treaty with the United States.

In the past eleven years, there have been

thousands of cases of Sikh deaths and torture at the hands of Indian police and security forces. According to domestic and international human rights groups, the following

are frequently used torture methods by the

Indian government:

A log of wood made heavier by weights is

placed on the legs of the detainee and rotated up and down.

The legs of detainees are often stretched

and then the thigh muscles are beaten until

they tear.

Body joints are beaten with a heavy baton.

Electric shocks are applied to genitals resulting in impotency.

Sikh women and girls are raped, then usually killed or rendered infertile.

Family members are forced to watch while

violence is inflicted on other family members. Often the parents must watch as their

children suffer.

Husbands are forced to beat their wives

and vice versa.

Pregnancies are forcibly terminated.

Security officials sponsor death squads

throughout Punjab. Typically, these agents

arrive in unmarked cars, dressed in plain

clothes and carry automatic weapons. The

death squads pick up suspects and take them

to interrogation centers.

According to Asia Watch, ‘‘virtually everyone detained in Punjab is tortured.’’ Sikhs

who die of torture are routinely listed as

having died in fake ‘‘encounters’’ with the

police. Behavior like this is the reason that

Amnesty International has been barred from

conducting an independent human-rights investigation in Punjab, Khalistan since 1978.

Even Fidel Castro’s Cuba has allowed Amnesty International into the country more

recently.

Eleven years after the Golden Temple massacre, the human rights situation has only

gotten worse. Our history and the history of

other minority nations under Indian occupation teach us that freedom for Khalistan,

Kashmir, and Nagaland is the only way to

prevent further massacres like the one in the

Golden Temple.

Secular democracy in India is a myth. The

plight of minority nations in India is a direct

result of Indian government’s racial and ethnic intolerance. A Brigadier General of the

Indian Army made clear the actual, if unofficial, policy of the Indian government he said

that he would execute the mayors of all six

villages, kill all the adult males, and confine

all the women to army camps, that they

would reproduce with Hindus and thereby

‘‘breed a new race.’’

No longer can genocide be an accepted

norm of democracy. Let me close with a

poignant quotation from a former world

leader, one that expresses the very situation

in which Sikhs find themselves.:

A government that has to rely on the

Criminal Law Amendment Act and similar

laws, that suppresses the press and literature, that bans hundreds of organizations,

that keeps people in prison without trial,

and that does so many things that are happening in India today, is a government that

has ceased to have even a shadow of a justification for its existence.

These were the words that Jawaharlal

Nehru used to describe the British Administration in India in 1936. What is the difference between the India of 1936 and the

India of 1995? I’ll tell you. Our small homeland of Punjab, Khalistan has 500,000 security

forces. The British never stationed that

many troops in the entire Indian subcontinent. And the British, in the century in

which they ruled Punjab, never came near

slaughtering the 120,000 Sikhs India has

slaughtered in the last eleven years.

The free countries of the world support

peace, justice, and freedom. I call on all

Americans to support freedom for Khalistan.

All the Sikh Nation asks is the same freedom that Americans enjoy.

On this anniversary of the Golden Temple

massacre, Sikhs will never forget the brutal

desecration of our most sacred shrine. I

know that by 1999, which will be the 300th

anniversary of the birth of the Sikh nation,

the truth will be known, and the Sikh nation

will celebrate that year in a free and sovereign Khalistan.

Khalistan Zindabad! India out of

Khalistan!

SAFE KIDS AND OREGON

fHON. ELIZABETH FURSE OF OREGON

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Wednesday, June 7, 1995

Ms. FURSE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in

support of the work that Oregon First Lady

Sharon Kitzhaber is doing in my home State

to protect our children from preventable injuries. Getting children involved in their own

safety is something that makes good sense,
E 1186 CONGRESSIONAL RECORD — Extensions of Remarks June 8, 1995

particularly because it prevents untold human

suffering and millions of health care dollars.

We cannot wait to take action; unintentional

injuries are the No. 1 killer of children under

age 14.

Sharon Kitzhaber is to be commended for

her work with the National Safe Kids campaign. Safe Kids is all about getting children

buckled up or getting bike helmets on their

heads. Oregon’s First Lady has been working

to spread the word throughout the State that

by working together, we can save lives and

money. In fact, according the National Safe

Kids campaign, every dollar spent on prevention saves up to $70. In terms of injuries, for

example, universal bike helmet use by children ages 4 to 15 would prevent 45,000 head

inquires a year.

I join with National Safe Kids to protest recent attempts in Congress to eliminate funding

for the National Center for Injury Prevention

and Control [NCIPC]. NCIPC has been instrumental in highlighting the important role that

prevention can play in saving money and lives

in America. In fact, NCIPC is the lead Federal

agency for the prevention of injuries outside

the workplace and has developed an impressive partnership with private and public institutions to carry out their vital mission.

I pay special tribute to the efforts of Oregon’s First Lady, Sharon Kitzhaber, and urge

all my colleagues to get involved in the National Safe Kids campaign.

WALDEN POND RED MAPLE

fHON. DAVID E. BONIOR OF MICHIGAN

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

Wednesday, June 7, 1995

Mr. BONIOR. Mr. Speaker, whenever I return home to Michigan, I am always grateful to

spend time with the people I have the privilege

to represent in the U.S. House of Representatives. I am fortunate to have been raised in a

district where people are community oriented

and dedicated to creating organizations that

better our lives.

Last month, on May 6, 1995, I was pleased

to have the opportunity to join the members of

a group that epitomizes pride in our community—the Friends of the Roseville Public Library. An organization dedicated to improving

the city’s library, they gathered to commemorate the 20th anniversity of the founding of the

group.

The guest speaker at the anniversary celebration was Mr. Robert Selwa. Bob recently

celebrated his 25th anniversary with our local

paper, the Macomb Daily, where he specializes in community journalism. Bob relishes

covering what he calls ‘‘the heart of life in

America—people in their homes, with their

families, friends, and neighbors; in their

schools and in their churches, patriotic folks

who believe in this country and the values of

life.’’ For 25 years, he has done a fine job covering ‘‘the heart of life in America’’ and the

people of Macomb County know they can

count on him.

Bob has been a friend for many years and

I was pleased to share the podium with him at

the Roseville event. His remarks were enjoyed

by everyone in attendance and I wish to share

them with a large audience. Bob reminds us

all of our literary heritage from Thoreau’s Walden Pond to the American writers of todays. I

am pleased to submit his speech as part of

the CONGRESSIONAL RECORD and hope that my

colleagues and their constituents find it as inspiring as I did.

OUR LITERARY HERITAGE: BOOKS AND

LIBRARIES BRING AMERICA TOGETHER

(By Bob Selwa)

Our thanks for this celebration go to Rose

Kollmorgen, our outstanding library director

in Roseville, and to the Friends of the Roseville Library, and to all our students and patrons, supporters and friends, including Congressman Dave Bonior.

Beginning today it will be said that a tree

grows in Roseville—a special tree—a tree

representing our literary heritage in America.

We dedicate this special tree today to

mark the 20th anniversary of the Friends of

the Roseville Library, a dedicated group of

volunteers, and of the Roseville Civic Center,

a magnificent facility.

The tree we dedicate is a red maple grown

from a seed from one of the trees in the

woods by Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts.

The maple tree is a proud member of our

woodlands from New England across the

northern Appalachians and throughout the

Midwest. The maple is one of the favorites at

home and in our neighborhoods, in our yards

and of our streets. The red maple is honored

as the state tree of Rhode Island, and its

cousin the sugar maple as the state tree of

Vermont, West Virginia, New York and Wisconsin.

Our Walden Pond red maple will be a reminder of the wonderful work for 20 years of

the Friends of the Roseville Library. This organization has funded 180 speaker programs

at the Roseville Civic Center, hosted an annual Children’s Christmas party, and provided bus tours for the public. The Friends

have given computerized databases, historical books and display items, a 55-gallon

aquarium, the compact disk collection, video

shelving, the ‘‘Books on Tape’’ collection, library seasonal decorations, and other donation totalling an estimated $140,000.

Thanks to both our civic leaders and our

volunteers, the Roseville Public Library

today has 110,000 books, 4,000 videos, and a

variety of other materials including records,

computer software, and books on tape.

Today the Walden Pond Reservation of

Massachusetts is a 300-acre wilderness forever wild. It includes a 64-acre lake. But New

England typically saves the word lake for

only the largest inland bodies of water, and

names its smaller lakes as ponds, and so we

have the name Walden Pond.

In 1845 the woods by Walden Pond were

owned by the great author, poet, philosopher

and lecturer Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803–1882,

one of our foremost transcendentalists and

one of many great literary figures of Concord, Massachusetts.

One of Emerson’s followers and friends was

Henry David Thoreau, 1817–1862. Thoreau was

born in Concord and graduated from Harvard

University in 1837. Though he could have

pursued any profession he wished, he chose

to do odd jobs, such as work as a gardener

and handyman and housekeeper for his

friend Emerson.

One day Thoreau approached Emerson with

the idea of building a cabin in the woods by

Walden Pond and going there to live to see

what life in harmony with nature would really be like.

Both cherished nature and both encouraged and practiced individualism, and so it

was natural for Thoreau to want to go off

into the woods by himself, and natural for

Emerson to support the idea.

On July 4, 1845, Thoreau moved to the

woods by Walden Pond. With his own hands

he built a simple wooden cabin, just enough

to shelter him from the occasional rain of

the Massachusetts springs, summers and autumns and the cold and the snow of the Massachusetts winters.

And so the seasons passed by at Walden

Pond—the summer and autumn of 1845, the

winter, spring, summer and autumn of 1846,

and the winter, spring and summer of 1847.

Occasionally Emerson checked on his friend

in the woods. Occasionally Thoreau came to

town. But essentially Thoreau was there by

himself in his cabin in the woods, wandering

those woods and the shore of that beautiful

lake, with the birds and the deer as his company.

Emerson attained great fame in his time,

but Thoreau attained even greater enduring

fame, when many years later, he reflected on

those times in the woods, and wrote the classic, ‘‘Walden.’’

Transcendentalists such as Emerson and

Thoreau believed in the harmony of man and

nature, in the importance of the individual,

and in the idea of passive resistance to civil

wrongs. When Thoreau went to jail rather

than pay a federal tax in protest of the federal government’s support of slavery and of

war with Mexico, and Emerson came to visit

him, the exchange was memorable.

‘‘What are you doing in there?’’ asked Emerson.

To which Thoreau asked, ‘‘What are you

doing out there?’’

Thoreau’s ‘‘On Civic Disobedience’’ written

from that experience in jail profoundly

changed the course of civilization, impacting

Mohandas Gandhi of India and Dr. Martin

Luther King of America. The writings and

lectures of Emerson and the writings of Thoreau created the American literary revolution. And they impacted our literature all

through the generations including the great

20th Century New England poet Robert

Frost.

From Emerson and Thoreau, to Laura

Ingalls Wilder’s beautiful and poetic prose

showing life on the frontier as it really was

for settlers, to the touching plays of Thornton Wilder especially ‘‘Our Town,’’ to the poetry of Frost, and to the sweeping historical

novels today of James Michener, we have a

literary heritage in America to cherish.

And today, in the wake of the terrorism

that occurred in Oklahoma City, as we struggle to build a national community and define

what our country is all about, we reflect on

what our literary heritage provides us and

what our libraries such as this excellent facility in Roseville mean to us.

Our literary heritage began with the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution when letters

and pamphlets and newspapers brought 13

separate colonies into one united nation.

Our literary heritage today is two centuries rich of a vast land. The heritage of

America is full and fascinating in the charms

of our 50 unique states. Our literary heritage

bonds a diverse people, as books and libraries

bring America together.

So today, when we dedicate the red maple

from the Walden Pond woods, let us reflect

on the writings of our American masters

such as Henry David Thoreau and Robert

Frost.

Here is a little taste of what Thoreau

wrote in ‘‘Walden’’:

‘‘I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from

any neighbor, in a house which I had built

myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts. . . .

‘‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. . . . But alert and healthy natures

remember that the sun rose clear. It is never

too late to give up our prejudices. No way of