Human rights violations in IOK

The Human Rights Day is observed the world over on December 10, every year to highlight the predicament of the oppressed and downtrodden people and to draw attention of the governments to take appropriate measures for mitigating the sufferings of the victimised masses.

All prominent Kashmiri liberation leaders including All Parties Hurriyet Conference Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq were placed under house arrest preceding that day to prevent them from leading protest marches in Srinagar against Indian army's brutalities targeting hapless Kashmiri people.

Occupied Kashmir has been the scene of unprecedented and un-ending atrocities being committed by the occupation forces against unarmed and undefended population demanding their right to self-determination. Since 1989 when the people of Kashmir started a new phase of their liberation struggle around one lac innocent Kashmiris have fallen victim to the army's bullets. As many as 6965 people were killed during custody of the armed forces. Around ten thousand persons including students and women have been forcibly disappeared and their whereabouts are still not known. Women and children have been worst affected segment of  the society. More than 22,000 women have been widowed and more than one lac children orphaned as a result of army's inhuman operations against the civilian population.

These figures speak volumes about both the enormity as well as the ghastliness of the tragedy. The Indian army's human rights record has been characterised by torture, rape, extra judicial killings and arbitrary arrests. These violations of human rights have been extensively documented by human rights organisations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and others. The Amnesty International in its various reports specially pointed out that the Armed Forces Powers Act (AFSPA) promulgated in occupied Kashmir gave unbridled authority to the armed personnel to use lethal force against any person and to destroy property, enter and search premises and, arrest people without warrants. Soldiers are protected from any legal action or prosecution under the law unless it is approved by New Delhi. The approval never comes and the crimes committed by the erring uniformed men are consigned to limbo of oblivion. The Amnesty International in its latest report observed that the Act was a “symbol of oppression, an object of hate and instrument of discrimination and high-handedness.”     Another harassing tragedy, which gave wider and heinous dimension to the scale of human rights violations in IOK was the discovery of 2700 unmarked graves identified in 55 villages in Bandipor, Baramullah and Kupwara districts. These graves are reported to be the eternal abodes of those unfortunate people who were killed in custody and their bodies consigned to these unknown mounds of earth by forces and the puppet police personnel. India, which is a signatory to all the UN covenants and agreements on human rights, has persistently ignored all the pleadings by the various human rights organisations to probe the discovery of un-named graves and also to take suitable measures to forestall human rights abuses in occupied territory.