Amritsar Massacre: Centenary

Lord Alton of Liverpool Excerpts

Tuesday 19th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My noble friend Lord Loomba’s eloquent speech and the erudite account by the noble Lord, Lord Desai, in The Rediscovery of India, of what occurred on 13 April 1919 at Amritsar, Jallianwala Bagh, remind us that brave Indian soldiers returning from World War I trenches wanted change. They then encountered two entirely different men: Mahatma Gandhi, with his commitment to peaceful change, and General Reginald Dyer, who, as we have been reminded, Winston Churchill told the House of Commons had resorted to,

“frightfulness… the inflicting of great slaughter or massacre… with the intention of terrorising not merely the rest of the crowd, but the whole district or the whole country”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/1920; col. 1728.]

A group of people had peacefully gathered to hold a prohibited public meeting. The response was wholly disproportionate and excessive. Although the House of Commons excoriated Dyer by denouncing his actions as an act of “brutality” that had “stunned this entire nation”, your Lordships’ House offered Dyer accolades. Perhaps today we can atone and help to heal that shocking moment of our history.

While we mark the Amritsar massacre, we must not neglect the other frightful tragedies currently unfolding in many parts of the world, in countries such as Burma and Sudan, which, like the Punjab, I have visited. On 12 February 2019—72 years since 12 February 1947, when ethnic and religious minorities in Burma, including the persecuted Rohingya Muslims and Kachin Christians, were promised autonomy within a federal Burma—over a thousand Karennis peacefully protested against the erection of a statue to General Aung San, the founder of the Tatmadaw, the Burmese army. The United Nations reported:

“Police fired rubber bullets and used batons and water cannons injuring up to 15 protesters in Loikaw, the capital of Kayah State and home to the Karenni ethnic minority”.


In January, the United Nations reported on the use of excessive force in Sudan against protesters in the biggest popular uprising since 1956. Only last week I met with Sudanese opposition leaders who described the use of live ammunition by security forces against protestors, egregious human rights violations, including at least 57 killings, and the torture, rape and imprisonment of women and children. Hundreds have been arrested and, according to the United Nations, they include journalists, civil society representatives and opposition leaders. The UN says that the security forces fired tear gas and live ammunition inside the premises of the Omdurman hospital, and attacks also took place at the Bahri teaching hospital and Haj Al-Safi hospital. Doctors have been prohibited from treating the wounded.

The picture elsewhere also suggests that we have failed to learn the lessons of Jallianwala Bagh. Take Nicaragua, where the EU Council says that recent protests were,

“brutally repressed by security forces and pro-government armed groups, leading to clashes, several hundreds dead and injured and the arrest of hundreds of citizens”.

That graphic account, recently given to me by a Nicaraguan, has been sent to the Foreign Secretary.

Peaceful protests and public gatherings are both enshrined in Articles 19 and 21 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Articles 19 and 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The best memorial to the victims of Jallianwala Bagh would be for Britain to fearlessly speak out for people who cannot do it for themselves, vociferously insisting on the right to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Do this, and it can help to redeem the callous and violent use of power such as 100 years ago at Amritsar, which Churchill described as,

“an extraordinary event, a monstrous event, an event which stands in singular and sinister isolation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/7/1920; col. 1725.]