'Teach human rights & remedies for violation at school level'

: The National Human Rights Commission today said school children should be educated on human rights and also the remedies available if there are violations, right from their formative stage.
"Human rights education should be provided to children right from school level. They should know from their formative stage about human rights and also remedies available in the event of the violation of the rights," NHRC member Justice D Murugesan said.
He was speaking to reporters at the end of an open hearing and sittinghere today held by the entire NHRC Commission, including its chairman Justice H L Dattu, to listen to grievances of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

Justice Murugesan said the meeting with Scheduled Castes and Tribes in their respective states by visiting their placeswas in keeping with the method evolved by NHRC to save time.
"We take cognisance of the complaints and deal with them in their respective places in the presence of officers and call for reports to redress the grievances," he said.
He said 19 complaints were received from the downtrodden, mostly related to non allocation of land and also 'failure' of police to register complaints filed by SC/ST people or non availability of community certificates.

"NHRC has called for reports and after perusing them we will come to conclusion whetherthere is violation", he said.

On the demand that Union Territory ofPuducherry, which now has only a Human Rights Committee,have a commission on par with states, he said NHRCfelt that UTs should also have separate Commissions as there could be no disparity between them and states in having the commissions.
He also said that defenders of human rights should face no trouble as "they are the eyes of human rights".
Justice Murugesan said that whenever there were reports ofhuman right activists facing trouble, "NHRC has never hesitated to take cognisance and will call for reports from the authorities".
The commission also interacted with various NGOs and officials of the Puducherry government.

A release said NGO delegates shared their concerns, particularly on certain important aspects of human rights like care and treatment of the mentally ill, bonded labour, child labour, structural discrimination and 'excesses' by the authorities.