Daily Times

Every year, on the 26th of June, the world observes The United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture to speak out against the crime of torture and to honour and support victims and survivors throughout the world.

Torture, according to globally recognized dictionaries, means action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as punishment or in order to force the victims to do or say something.

Human Rights Convention also takes a serious notice of this inhuman crime of torture. Article 3 of the Human Rights Convention (ECHR) declares: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” And the HR Court’s observation is: “Torture is deliberate, inhuman treatment causing very serious and cruel suffering”.

Applying these universally accepted observations and definitions to the Occupied Kashmir situation, one is fully justified in demanding that the United Nations must also start observing an international day in support of Kashmiri victims of torture. Yes, torture that is being inflicted deliberately, without pause, for years and years together by Indian forces on hapless Kashmiri Muslims living in majority in the Kashmir Valley which forms a part of Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IoJ&K).

Consider, for instance, the current situation: curfews, siege and suffocating lockdown (not the Covid-19 related lockdown) for more than 300 days, about 0.8 to 0.9 million regular Army troops pitted against a small community that is struggling for survival and whose ascertainment of will through a UN plebiscite, has not taken place despite the much trumpeted pledge of the former Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, that he would ensure that the Kashmiris were given their due right of self-determination according to UN Security Council resolutions. So much so, Nehru is on record having vociferously declared that neither Kashmir belonged to India nor to Pakistan, but only to Kashmiris.

Torture, according to globally recognized dictionaries, means action or practice of inflicting severe pain on someone as punishment or in order to force the victims to do or say something

Decades have lapsed since then.

What to talk of giving the right of self- determination to the majority of Muslims dwelling in the Kashmir Valley, successive Indian governments have unleashed a hell of deprivations, siege, torture, humilation, mass and gang rapes, forced disappearances and extra-judicial killing of Muslim Kashmiri youth while in custody. Indian Army, paramilitary troops, CRPF and BSF have been given wide powers to perpetrate any inhuman act, to any degree, without accountability in any court, let alone Human Rights Convention’s declarations and HR Court’s observations.

By now, it is a globally known reality that the Indian Muslims are facing worst form of hatred at the hands of Hindu supremacists. Reports of lynching and physical bashing of unarmed Muslims by armed and organized RSS extremists have become a usual routine in India. And, as for the plight of Kashmiri Muslims, they are subjected to extreme oppression and tyranny at the hands of Indian authorities.

Then, the conferment of unchallenged, unbridled powers on Indian armed forces through promulgation of Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and Public Safety Act, have led to mass killings of innocent, besieged Kashmiris and mass, gang rapes of Kashmiri women. On the basis of these black laws, Indian troops have virtually turned into soldiers-cum-magistrates who exercise judicial (in fact, extra-judicial) powers while conducting raids and search operations in the houses of hapless Kashmiris without a search warrant being obtained from a magistrate. Subsequently, they can detain the arrested Kashmiris without the court’s permission and the duration of this detention is also decided by the Army officers. By now, it is a reported fact that a large number of these Kashmiris detained in this illegal manner, have never returned to their homes. Some of them who return have gone feeble and incapacitated because of severe mental and physical torture inflicted on them by Indian forces, during custody.

To the Kashmiri Muslims’ dismay, these bestialities have multiplied manifold during the incumbency of BJP government led by Nirendra Modi that slavishly follows and implements the hate-and-violence agenda of RSS whose raison d’etre is extreme hatred for non-Hindus, especially Muslims. According to eminent Indian scholar, Arundhati Roy, ” RSS compares Muslims of India to Jews of Germany, believing that Muslims have no place in Hindu India.” Roy says further, ” BJP leaders, in their speeches, repeatedly cast Muslims as ‘treacherous permanent outsiders’ whose only place is either graveyard or Pakistan”.

A pertinent question that now needs to be asked by the modern civilized world, is whether the United Nations and the self-proclaimed champions of human rights are unaware of these unchecked brutalities as well as hundreds of victims of deliberate, decades’ long torture and suffering ?

The writer is a senior journalist and TV analyst