Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: Chairman Kashmir Institute of International Relations (KIIR) Altaf Hussain Wani has urged the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) to make India accountable for the heinous war crimes its forces have been committing against people in the occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir.

Taking part in general debate held under agenda item 3 during the 49th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, Wani said the Indian forces were involved in gross human rights violations, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killing of youth in the occupied territory, said a press release.

Referring to rising incidents of state terrorism in the IIOJK, he said that the Indian occupation forces had mercilessly gunned down 210 Kashmiri youth in 2020 during fake encounters. He said that after failing to curb ongoing civil resistance in Kashmir, the frustrated Indian military and paramilitary forces resorted to a ruthless catch and kill campaign across the valley to target educated youth, civil society activists.

Exterminating Kashmiri youth and civil society activists by the Indian army during siege and search operations, he said, amply demonstrated the communal regime’s anti-Muslim design. He said that under the blanket protection of illegal and inhumane laws like PSA, UAPA and AFSPA Indian forces were abducting educated Kashmiri youth and killing them in fake and stage-managed encounters. The killing spree of innocent civilians in Kashmir, he said, continued unabated with shameless impunity.

The ruthless killing campaign, he said, was part of India’s deep-rooted conspiracy to suppress Kashmiris’ struggle for right to self-determination.

He said that recently an under-trial youth Mr. Zia Mustafa was taken out from jail and killed in a fake encounter by the Indian armed forces’ personnel in the Poonch area of the Indian occupied Kashmir. Wani said that ruthless killing of Kashmiri youth in fake encounters by the Indian forces was an abhorrent manifestation of the Indian state terrorism.

“Perpetrators involved in these heinous crimes are being protected making Kashmir a lawless land”, he said adding that it was high time that the council should redouble its efforts to hold the Indian government accountable of the crimes its forces have been committing against Kashmiris.