Afia Ambreen
According to reports eight people martyred and six injured in two separate gun battles in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK). A gunfight broke out before dawn when government forces besieged a residential area in the city of Pulwama after being told about the presence of fighters. Indian soldiers surrounded an orchard in neighbouring Shopian district where a group of fighters were hiding, sparking another fierce gun battle that lasted hours and ended with the martyrdom of three fighters. Kashmiris have for decades fought against Indian atrocities in IOK, seeking the Himalayan territory’s merger with Pakistan or outright independence. The conflict has left tens of thousands dead, mostly civilians. At least 83 fighters have been martyred in armed clashes with Indian forces so far this year. Last year was the deadliest in a decade when around 600 were killed including soldiers, fighters and civilians.
Moreover, the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society and the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons while releasing a comprehensive report on human rights violations by India have urged the United Nations to establish a commission of inquiry to investigate the brutal torture inflicted by Indian forces in the territory. The report released by the JKCCS and APDP in Srinagar also called upon India to ratify the UN Convention against torture and also allow global right groups’ unhindered access to Kashmir. The 560-page report focuses on the torture perpetrated in Jammu and Kashmir by the Indian forces since 1990.
The report points out that torture is used as a matter of policy by the Indian State in Jammu and Kashmir in a systematic and institutional manner and tens of thousands of civilians have been subjected to torture. The report cited the recent case of the custodial killing of a 29-year-old school principal, Rizwan Pandit and said that no case was registered against police officials responsible for his custodial killing. The forms of torture that have been documented in the report include stripping the detainees naked, beating with sticks, iron rods or leather belts, roller treatment, water-boarding, dunking detainees head in water, electrocution, hanging from the ceiling mostly upside down, burning of the body with hot objects, solitary confinement, sleep deprivation and sexual torture.
Meanwhile, three special rapporteurs of the United Nations Human Rights Council in a letter to the Indian government have demanded details on steps taken to punish or provide justice to victims and their next of kin in 76 cases of torture and arbitrary killing in Indian occupied Kashmir since 1990. The letter is written by the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Agnes Callamard, Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Dainius Puras and the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, Nils Melzer.
At last, however, in the first-ever report by the UN’s Office of the High Commission of Human Rights about the disputed region, the suffering of its people at the hands of the Indian government has found expression on the global stage, where it deserves the attention it has scarcely received from the rest of the world. The report, which calls for a high level UN investigation, documents the grotesque human rights violations in IHK since 2016, when the murder of Burhan Wani by the Indian army triggered the latest uprising. Excessive force has resulted in hundreds of deaths and injuries; use of pellet-firing shotguns has left many protesters with vision impairment. Other depredations include enforced disappearances, arbitrary arrests and detentions including of minors torture, rape, etc. There is seemingly no end to the dehumanisation of the local population at the hands of a state determined to break them.
The special laws in force in IHK enable this violence. As the report rightly notes, they allow the security forces to act with total impunity, and “jeopardise the right to remedy for victims” in other words, it is a staggeringly unequal conflict. Predictably, India has rejected the UN agency’s findings out of hand as being “fallacious, tendentious and motivated”, a reaction that displays the same arrogance and myopia as that which drives its policies. JKCCS has written scathing reports in the past about the brutality by some of the hundreds of thousands of Indian troops stationed in the region and highlighted the widespread of powers granted to them, which has led to culture of impunity and rights abuses. They were first to publicise thousands of unmarked graves in remote parts of occupied Kashmir and demand that they be investigated to determine who the dead were and how they were killed. The report said the institutions of the state like legislature, executive, judiciary and armed forces use torture “in a systematic and institutional manner”.
Unfortunately, Indian Occupied Kashmir is patrolled by military, paramilitary and armed police and remains one of the most militarised regions in the world. For a country like India that aspires to a seat at the UN Security Council and similar decision making bodies, the only befitting response to the report should be an unequivocal commitment to act on it.
