SOUTH ASIA - House Foreign Affairs Committee Democrats

2249rights of the mentally ill and mentally disabled are provided for in the Constitutionand the Mental Health Act of 1987. However, the NHRC noted that despite theseprotections, conditions in many mental hospitals are unsatisfactory. They continueto embody old concepts of mental health care and essentially function as custodialrather than therapeutic institutions. Overcrowded and serving as ‘‘dumpinggrounds’’ for desperate relatives, some mental hospitals lack even basic amenitiesand have poor medical facilities. In August 1999, the NHRC reported that it hadassumed the management of mental hospitals in Ranchi, Bihar, Agra, UttarPradesh, and Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, at the direction of the Supreme Court. InFebruary NHRC Chairman Justice J.S. Verma asked chief ministers of all the statesand administrators of all the union territories ‘‘to issue clear directions to the inspectorgenerals of prisons to ensure that mentally ill persons are not kept in jailunder any circumstances.’’ However, there was little follow-up to the NHRC direction.Indigenous People.—The Innerline Regulations enacted by the British in 1873 stillprovide the basis for safeguarding tribal rights in most of the northeastern borderstates. They are in effect in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram,but not in Tripura, in which the tribal population has been reduced to 30 percentof the total population due to increased Bengali migration since partition. These regulationsprohibit any person, including citizens from other states, from going beyondan inner boundary without a valid permit. No rubber, wax, ivory, or other forestproducts may be removed from the protected areas without prior authorization. Nooutsiders are allowed to own land in the tribal areas without approval from tribalauthorities.The 1991 census, the last conducted, showed that 8.08 percent of citizens belongedto scheduled tribes. According to the Indian Confederation of Indigenous and TribalPeople (ICITP), 80 percent of the tribal population live below the poverty level. InMay 1998, the NHRC established a panel to investigate the condition of the country’s20 million denotified tribal people, who in 1871 the British colonial governmentlabeled as belonging to ‘‘criminal tribes’’). During the year, the panel prepared a reportfor the NHRC on their condition and advised the NHRC in other ways.Denotifed tribal peoples are tribal people The colonial act listing these tribes wasrepealed in 1951, but the stigma remains and many of these tribal people still arediscriminated against actively. On February 15, the NHRC recommended that the‘‘Habitual Offenders Act,’’ aimed at the denotified and nomadic tribes, be repealed.According to the ICITP, more than 40,000 tribal women, mainly from Orissa andBihar, have been forced into situations of economic and sexual exploitation (see Sections6.c. and 6.f.); many come from tribes that were driven off the land by nationalpark schemes. Special courts to hear complaints of atrocities committed against tribalpeople were to have been established under the protection of Civil Rights Act of1976, but this never was accomplished.Despite constitutional safeguards, the rights of indigenous groups in the easternparts of the country often are ignored. Indigenous people suffer discrimination andharassment, have been deprived wrongly of their land, and have been subject to tortureand to arbitrary arrest. There has been encroachment on tribal land in almostevery eastern state, including by illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, and by businessesthat illegally have removed forest and mineral products. Moreover, persons fromother backgrounds often usurp places reserved for members of tribes and lowercastes in national education institutions. Mob lynchings, arson, and police atrocitiesagainst tribal people occur in many states (see Section 1.c.). For example, on January31, local landowners attacked the tribal village of Ghutewadi, Ahmednagar district,Maharashtra, killing a 60-year-old tribal woman and injuring 10 other womenand a child. On July 4, a mob killed a 90-year-old tribal woman and set 16 houseson fire following the abduction of a nontribal youth from Futotip village in NorthTripura. On August 17, a mob attacked Jatindra Kumr Jamatya, a tribal activistand member of the ruling CPI(M)in Nagrai, South Tripura.In the Andaman Islands in 1999, the local government implemented a policy ofpermitting development of the Jawara tribal area, which threatens the indigenousgroup’s way of life. The construction of a road through the forest that is inhabitedby this group and the encroachment of Indian settlers have impacted negatively thisindigenous group’s cultural vitality, economic self-sufficiency, and physical and mentalhealth. These integrative policies have been motivated partly by humanitarianconcerns, although interest in commercial exploitation of virgin forests that we inhabitedby tribal people is another strong factor behind these policies. A manifestationof this negative trend was a destructive outbreak of measles that affected about30 persons among the Jawara tribal people, which was reported in the press in September1999.VerDate 11-MAY-2000 13:46 Sep 20, 2001 Jkt 071555 PO 00000 Frm 00093 Fmt 6601 Sfmt 6621 F:\WORK\COUNTRYR\S71555\71555.035 HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1