Srinagar: Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons Saturday staged a peaceful protest against Army decision to close Pathribal fake encounter case. Scores of APDP activists led by Parvena Ahangar assembled in Press Enclave Srinagar. Protestors were carrying banners and placards seeking justice for Pathribal fake encounter victim families. The protestors termed the Army decision as murder of justice and as a mark of protest had wrapped their mouths with pieces of clothes.
Talking to reporters, APDP chairperson, Parvena Ahangar said that Army decision has not come as a surprise to the people of Kashmir as generations of Kashmiris have been witness to extra judicial killings, torture, rape, enforced disappearances, molestation, humiliations and other heinous violations at the hands of the Indian soldiers and their collaborators in Kashmir.
She said that not a single Indian soldier has so far been convicted for the crimes they committed in Kashmir reflects that the tall claims of justice and reparation made by the Indian state and its collaborators are nothing but a tactics to hood-wink the international community and an attempt to cover-up India’s crime against humanity in Kashmir.
“As parents and relatives of the victims of enforced disappearances we are not unfamiliar with the Indian state’s architecture of oppression. Last twenty years of our struggle for justice and liberty is witness to the fact that in Kashmir elaborate oppressive apparatus of Indian State ensures control over every aspect of our lives. The fair and impartial trials, which have historically been the cornerstone of civilized regimes across the globe, are impossible in case of Kashmir.”
APDP said that Pathribal Fake Encounter Case was very unique as it attracted media attention and was indeed an exception among thousands of incidents of human rights abuses which never get reported.
In Jammu and Kashmir, Indian State acts as the judge, the jury and the executioner. Time and again, the Indian state has demonstrated that its interests in Kashmir guarded by its soldiers are superior to the rights of the individual Kashmiris. The Indian judiciary has been hand in glove with the state in sustaining the predominance of the India’s interests over the rights of the people of Kashmir. Such closures expose the Indian oppression and Indian State’s facade of justice in Kashmir. It also exposes the so called mainstream regional parties of Kashmir who have all along been their partners in the crime.(CNS)