- Indian human rights violations in Occupied Kashmir
Since 1989, an indigenous Kashmiri uprising seeking freedom from India has resulted in the martyrdom of over 70,000 Muslim residents of the disputed state by unbridled Indian security forces. These 500,000-plus troops have let loose a reign of terror against protesting civilians, indulging with impunity in brutal killings and barbaric tortures that would have done the Spanish Inquisition proud. Secure in their immunity, protected from prosecution by draconian laws and encouraged by the callous silence of judiciary, executive, civil society and media, thousands of unmarked graves remain a grim testimony to the residents’ tragic plight. But while the Indian intelligentsia remains fossilized in a cocoon of self-denial and self-deception, the Western media is slowly awakening from its deep slumber and turning the spotlight on Indian forces’ atrocities.
The startling contents of the maiden UN June 2018 report on human rights abuses in Occupied Kashmir were hence not a sudden and total surprise, nor too was the knee-jerk Pavlovian Indian reaction of terming it ‘fallacious’ and seeing ‘clear bias’ in it. Subsequent attempts by the Human Rights Council’s special rapporteurs on Extrajudicial Killings, Torture and Right to Health, to seek an Indian response to the charges were met with petulant intransigence and typical disdain, alleging ‘individual prejudice’ in the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, and culminating in the recent Indian scuttling of all communications with these embarrassing UN mandate holders. India has so far illegally declined 20 visit requests by special rapporteurs. A meticulous 560-page report released on Monday by the Jammu and Kashmir-based Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and J and K Coalition of Civil Society, starkly highlights India’s shameless use of torture as a ‘matter of policy’ and an ‘instrument of control’ (70 percent of torture victims were civilians, some were minors, 11 percent died), apart from such ‘refinements’ as electrocution, water-boarding, extrajudicial killing, blinding and maiming with shotgun pellets, (Stalinist) sleep deprivation, sexual torture and rape. These detailed 432 case studies cry out for an independent UN human rights commission, intensive investigation, and unhindered access of global rights groups to Occupied Kashmir. India’s hidden Guantanamo Bays and Abu Ghraibs must be exposed, its shallow bluff of ‘Pakistan’s proxy war’ called.
