The chairman of parliament’s Kashmir Committee, Shehryar Khan Afridi said the war crimes in Indian Occupied Kashmir must be investigated and probed by the UN as he wanted the international community’s intervention to help bring “genocide of Kashmiris” to an end.
Addressing a seminar titled ‘Human security discourse in 21st century’ held here under the aegis of The Human Security Institute (THSI), he said: “Six hundred days of the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35-A have gone by but the world has failed to act and stop colonialisation of Jammu and Kashmir by India”.
He said the United Nations must learn from the failure of the League of Nations and play its role in resolving longstanding issues hampering peace and development in the world.
Mr Afridi said India was implementing war crimes in occupied Jammu and Kashmir after abrogation of Articles 370 and 35-A making Kashmir a fit case for the UN intervention.
He said if the UN failed to resolve disputes and conflicts, there would be a huge question mark on its fate.
He said the prosperous world needed to realise that their trade interests in India could make them compromise on human rights and human values.
Human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir union territory are an ongoing issue in northern parts of India. The abuses range from mass killings, enforced disappearances, torture, rape and sexual abuse to political repression and suppression of freedom of speech. The Indian Army, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Personnel (BSF) and various separatist militant groups[1][2] have been accused and held accountable for committing severe human rights abuses against Kashmiri civilians.[3][4][5][6]
Some rights groups say more than 100,000 people have died since 1989[7] while the official figures from Indian sources state the estimates of number of civilians killed due to the insurgency as above 50,000.[8] According to scholar Seema Kazi, the crimes by militants are incomparable to the larger scale abuse by Indian state forces.[9
Diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks revealed that the Red Cross had briefed US officials in Delhi in 2005 about the use of torture from 2002–2004 by security forces against hundreds of detainees suspected of being connected to or having information about militants.[16][17]
In a 1993 report, Human Rights Watch stated that Indian security forces “assaulted civilians during search operations, tortured and summarily executed detainees in custody and murdered civilians in reprisal attacks”; according to the report, militants had also targeted civilians, but to a lesser extent than security forces. Rape was regularly used as a means to “punish and humiliate” communities.[18] Scholar Seema Kazi says it is used as a weapon of war by the state against the population.[19] A 2010 US state department report stated that the Indian army in Jammu and Kashmir had carried out extrajudicial killings of civilians and suspected insurgents. The report also described killings and abuse being carried out by insurgents and separatists.[20] In 2010, statistics presented to the Indian government’s Cabinet Committee on Security showed that for the first time since the 1980s, the number of civilian deaths attributed to the Indian forces was higher than those attributed to insurgents’ actions. The Indian Army claims that 97% of the reports about the human rights abuse have been found to be “fake or motivated” based on the investigation performed by the Army However, a report by the US State Department said, “Indian authorities use Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to avoid holding its security forces responsible for the deaths of civilians in Jammu and Kashmir.”
