This event was organised by World Muslim Congress
Srinagar: Chairman Jammu Kashmir National Front Nayeem Khan, has addressed delegates via skype from Srinagar on sidelines of 26th session of UNHRC saying that Kashmir has always been seen by the outsiders as a territorial dispute between two neighboring states. “No one understands the fact that the Kashmiri struggle is about the right of Kashmiri people to self-determination,” he said in his address, according to a statement issued to KNS.
Khan said: “Since August 1947 India has forcibly occupied Kashmir through military power. After democratic and political space was denied to Kashmiri youth, they took to armed resistance in 1989 as a means to force the Indian state to grant us our legitimate right upheld by the United Nations.
There have been repeated cases of human rights violation by the Indian forces. Human rights organizations are routinely denied permission to investigate in a free manner. News persons have been attacked and arrested. Villages have been razed to the ground.
The justice system of the world’s largest so-called democracy also falls flat on its face when it comes to the human rights violations committed by its army in Kashmir. The Indian army’s decision to acquit itself in the cases like Pathribal, Kunan-Poshpora, and Sopore and Gow Kadal massacres and numerous similar cases has caused deep wound in the hearts of Kashmiris.
Many cases of human rights violation stem from abuse of power under repressive laws given to troops who unleash terror against the Kashmiri people. Civilians are taken into custody for acts that are legitimized by international human rights standards of free speech. While many arrests are without any legal justification whatsoever, the Indian forces also depend on several laws to justify their acts of human rights violation.
The laws widely invoked in Kashmir violate international standards of humanitarian law. Hundreds of innocent Kashmiri youth are languishing in Indian jails without trial for past more than two decades under draconian laws like Public Safety Act and Disturbed Areas Act.
Under Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act the Indian forces in Kashmir detain civilians for up to two years without trial or due process for different reasons, including the exercise of free speech.
Hundreds of civilian’s including women and children have been extra judicially executed by Indian forces and killings concealed as fake encounters, a fact which has been duly reported by the groups like Human Rights Watch.
Indian forces are involved in cases of enforced disappearances of thousands of around 10 thousand Kashmiris where they deny having their information or custody. This is often in association with torture or extrajudicial killing. These disappeared men have left an army of “half-widows” who end up impoverished. These are believed to be dumped in thousands of mass graves across Kashmir.
A human rights commission inquiry confirmed there are thousands of such mass graves in Jammu and Kashmir. Of the 2730 bodies uncovered in 4 of the 14 districts, 574 bodies were identified as missing locals in contrast to the Indian government’s insistence that all the graves belong to foreign militants.
A glaring example of mass rape of women in 1991 by Indian Army in Kunan-Pospora village. On February 23, 1991, Indian army at 11:00 PM isolated and interrogated males at the Kunan Poshpora village of Kupwara district and gang-raped over 35 women of the village that night, some of them 70 years old. Till date justice has been denied to these women despite appeals from various international human rights organizations for administering justice to them.
From 2008 there has been a momentous shift from armed to peaceful struggle against the Indian occupation and people took to streets in huge numbers to demand right to self determination. But, it made no difference to the Indian state. It used the same brutal methods to crush the civilian uprising killing 67 in 2008 in one go and 117 school boys and girls in the summer uprising of 2010 and crippling at least five thousand persons as a warning to the dissenting public.
This year during elections for Indian Parliament, 80 per cent Kashmiri people boycotted the voting .Thousands of youth who were peacefully protesting were arbitrarily detained by the police to enable the sham polls. And when protests still continued, the government responded with bullets. killing one youth in May. I appeal to the international community to compel the Indian Government to change its attitude towards Kashmir and withdraw its army from Kashmir as a first gesture to uphold the human rights of people as promised by India at United Nations Organization.”