May 28, 2003	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 25,1424

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NEW YORK, May 27: Well-known human rights activist Asma Jehangir has asserted that “the policy of the United States government to control the population of the world through puppet regimes will breed more terrorism and more resentment around the world.”

“It would only silence liberal and balanced views and make heroes of hate preachers on both sides of the globe (north and south),” she said.

Delivering a keynote address to the Amherst College’s class of 2003 at the weekend when she received honorary doctorate of law, she said that “the solution does not lie in conquering each other and in regime change.”

Saying that four wars in the Indo-Pakistan subcontinent had bred a strange kind of “nationalist chauvinism” — akin to what was being seen in the US after the Gulf wars — she felt that such “chauvinism” consequently compromised human rights and individual liberties.

Despite three years of military rule the people of Pakistan had rejected the military regimes despite friends in Washington, Ms Jehangir said.

She posed a query: “are we supporting the government by the people” or the people who profess they know what is good for us.

Saying that the Bush administration had linked human rights and democracy in Pakistan with benign military rule, Ms Jehangir nevertheless noted that civil society in Pakistan had clipped the hands of the rulers.

She was of the opinion that democracy in India had aged and the present Bharatia Janata Party government was guilty of innumerable human rights abuses. “In India democracy needs rejuvenation,” she underscored.

Ms Jehangir, who is also United Nations special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings, expressed hope in the good sense of people the world over, noting that hundreds and thousands of people came out in the streets to say “no to war” and “no to terrorism.”