Daily Times

It has been quite some time now in the Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) that a day has passed without cold-blooded killing of innocent Kashmiris by the Indian security forces. Since violence has become a top agenda item for the occupation forces, Indian soldiers no more find it necessary to look for some pretext to carry out daylight massacres at will.

In a recent and yet another gory act of state-sponsored violence, 20 Kashmiris in Kachdoora village in Shopian district of IHK were martyred by Indian military, suspecting them to be either militants or their supporters. Occupation forces also resorted to indiscriminate firing at people protesting against the so-called door-to-door operation against the alleged militants.

Incidents of similar human rights violations with much graver results have since long been a routine happening in IHK. Nevertheless India has by and large remained successful in hiding its brutalities. However, in a rare attempt at exposing Indian atrocities on Kashmiris, the United Nations Office of the Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) has issued a report that testified the incidents of grave human rights abuses in the valley. The 49-page report is a detailed account of human rights violations committed by the Indian security forces ranging from kidnapping to killing of civilians and gang rapes of Kashmiri women by soldiers. The report criticised the chronic impunity enjoyed by the Indian military in Kashmir which further propels the soldiers to inflict sufferings on unarmed protesters, especially in Srinagar and adjoining areas. The part of the report that really pinched the Indian authorities is the recommendation for establishment of an independent Commission of Inquiry (CoI), which has also been endorsed by the OIC-IPHRC.

Since the release of OHCHR report on Indian atrocities in IHK, India is actively lobbying against the report at UN Human Rights Council as well as like-minded capitals to garner support for challenging its credibility and authenticity. However, it would be very hard for India this time to set aside the OHCHR fact-file on excesses the wretched Kashmiris have been subjected to for decades.

Militarily, there is no comparison between the men in armours and the protesting Kashmiris with stones and slogans as their only weapons. Unarmed men, women, school-going children and aged people continue to be subjected to mental, psychological as well as physical humiliation and torture by the Indian military personnel merely for being Muslim Kashmiris and bona fide residents of the IHK. In this backdrop, retaliation from incessantly mortified local Kashmiris was inevitable and long overdue. The ongoing intifada in Held Kashmir is indeed a natural but indigenous reprisal by oppressed Kashmiris who are now fully prepared to sacrifice everything to liberate themselves from Indian occupation.

For long, however, the daily account on the plight of the people of occupied Kashmir had fallen short of knocking at the conscience of the United Nations in general and human rights watchdogs in particular. Absence of resources and projection forums have miserably failed the oppressed Kashmiris in making the world bodies realize that they have so far remained painfully quiet and complacent while thousands of young Kashmiri freedom-seekers have been brutally tortured and killed by the Indian security forces.

The OHCHR report might not have fully encompassed the everyday incidents of gashing of eyes, chopping off of vital body parts, persecution during unending curfews including gang rapes, burning of the agitators alive, torching of their villages along with crops and destruction of their business as well as economic life. A complete genocide of the Kashmiri people looks to be on the Indian card in utter defiance of the international human rights laws. Before it is too late, the UN inquiry commission should start its investigations of human rights violations in the valley and based thereon hold Indian government unequivocally responsible for committing unprecedented brutalities on Kashmiris.

Published in Daily Times, July 24^th 2018.