Over 3-years' dialogue sans change in Kashmir situation
Srinagar: The Pak-India dialogue process, started in January 2004 when President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee met in Islamabad, has entered into fourth year. Since then, international community and more importantly, Kashmiris have been continuously pinning its hopes that these talks focused mainly on the core issue of Kashmir would help improve the ground situation in occupied Kashmir. But to the dismay of all, the situation remains as it was; Kashmiris are facing the same ordeal as before 2004. According to the data since January 2004 to March 2007, Indian troops in their continued acts of state terrorism have killed 3906 Kashmiris, including 332 in custody. Among the killed are also 117 women and 102 children. During this period, 997 structures, including shops and residential houses, have been destroyed, 328 women molested, 830 youth disappeared, 625 women rendered widowed and 1684 children orphaned. This mind-boggling number of human rights violations occurred in an era when the people of the 21st century are struggling for universal peace end harmony.
A couple of months ago, the exhumation of the dead bodies of Abdul Rahman Paddar, Maulvi Shoukat Ahmed, Ghulam Nabi Wani, Ali Mohammad Paddar and Nazeer Ahmad Deka and their subsequent DNA tests conducted at Chandigarh Forensic Labs had, in fact, established the flagrant phenomena of disappearances and killings of Kashmiri youth in custody and fake encounters by Indian troops. Although India endeavored to color the incidents as the crimes committed by some individuals among the Special Operation Group (SOG) of Indian Police, however, the explicit matters of routine in occupied Kashmir are hard to conceal.
All the atrocities being inflicted upon the Kashmiris are systematically governed by Indian state policy to continue them to the extent that they withdraw from their legitimate struggle against illegal Indian occupation. Indian authorities by the exhumation of the dead bodies of the above-mentioned Kashmiris during the preceding months have tried to prove that HR violations in occupied Kashmir are driven by a few disgruntled individuals among SOG. To augment the effect, India has also suspended some of its policemen due to their involvement to prove the notion that these are the individuals and not the state that is responsible for HR violations in the occupied territory. Though, it is only the tip of the iceberg of the killings of Kashmiri youth in fake encounters and during custody who afterwards are labeled as foreign militants, yet it is a solid proof of the day-to-day acts of Indian state terrorism in the Indian-Occupied Kashmir.
The SOG personnel who carried out the above heinous killings were allured by the Indian policy of giving rewards and promotions for such acts. The puppet regime, therefore, had duly rewarded the SOG personnel with 1,20,000 Indian rupees. Indian intransigence in its policy towards Kashmiris is evident from myriads of examples, one of them being Indian stubbornness for not releasing thousands of Kashmiris living in distressed conditions in different jails of India and occupied Kashmir. Among illegally arrested Kashmiris are also included prominent Kashmiri liberation leaders, Sheikh Abdul Aziz, Zamruda Habib, Muhammad Ahsan Untoo, Ashiq Hussain Fakhtoo, Bilal Siddiqi, Ghulam Muhammad Khan Sopori and many others.
Another striking fact of India's intransigence is that despite the ongoing peace process, it has blatantly shunned from repealing black laws implemented to suppress Kashmiris. Under these laws Indian troops enjoy full impunity to suppress Kashmiris (by killing, arresting, harassing). These laws include Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), Terrorism And Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) and the Jammu And Kashmir Disturbed Areas Act (DAA). Under the DAA, Indian troops have extraordinary powers, including authority to shoot the suspected and to destroy structures merely on suspicions. TADA gives Indian troops special powers for the use of force, arrest and detention. POTA has equipped Indian troops with extraordinary lethal powers. According to it, any act committed with any weapon (even licensed) can be described as a terrorist act. The suspects can be detained for three months without charges being brought against them and three more months if allowed by a special judge. Following intense international pressure, TADA and POTA was repealed, however, cases are still filed under this draconian law. Glaring examples in this regard are those of the cases filed against prominent Kashmiri Liberation leaders, Syed Ali Gilani and Muhammad Yasin Malik.
AFSPA gives armed and paramilitary forces sweeping powers that facilitate arbitrary arrests and detentions and extra-judicial executions and reinforce the impunity of offenders acting under it. PSA permits administrative detention for a period of up to two years on vaguely defined grounds to prevent people "from acting in any manner prejudicial to the security of the state or the maintenance of public order". Important legal and constitutional safeguards including the right to be brought before a magistrate within 24 hours of arrest and to consult a lawyer of one's choice, are not available to anyone held under preventive detention legislation. Thousands of people over the years have been detained under the Act. Under the above-mentioned black laws, confessions made before police, and army officers have been described as admissible in the courts of law. The result has been that many Kashmiri youth like Muhammad Afzal Guru and Dr Muhammad Qasim Fakhtoo were awarded death sentences and life imprisonments on the basis of their so-called confessions recorded under severe torture during interrogation.
There are thousands of Kashmiris who for years have been searching for their missing kin in Indian troops' custody in every nook and corner of India and the occupied territory. During this time, most of them have also heavily greased the palms of Indian officials only to have a single look either of a missing son, father, husband, brother, mother or a sister. According to the data released by the Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), the number of those missing in troops custody exceeds ten thousand. Among the missing are also included children less than 10-year old. Missing for over a decade, their mothers faintly hope them to have grown up as adults.
No day passes in occupied Kashmir without a forceful protest demonstration, sit-ins or strikes, in which decades-suppressed IOK people call upon International community to press upon India to stop its troops' ever-growing human rights violations. India needs to realize that it will have to take serious measures to improve human rights situation in the occupied territory such as repealing the draconian laws and pulling out of its troops from the towns and populated areas as the first phase of demilitarization from the occupied territory. The rights violations committed by Indian troops can indeed be done away with if the demilitarization of Kashmir as proposed in the four-point formula of Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf is implemented in its letter and spirit. As for International community, it should take cognizance of the unabated acts of Indian terrorism and press upon India to allow international human rights bodies to investigate into the massive acts on Human Rights violations to know the crude facts of the last 18 years.
