Only a Solution in Kashmir Will Bring Peace and Security to All of South Asia

By Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai

India’s human rights violations in Kashmir are systematic, deliberate, and officially sanctioned. India has never prosecuted even one of its 700,000 military and paramilitary personnel there for human rights abuses, and its laws grant legal immunity for any actions aimed at suppressing Kashmiri dissent or support for self-determination.

Information compiled by the London-based Amnesty International, New York-based Asia Watch, Boston-based Physicians for Human Rights and other human rights and humanitarian organizations establish the following:

A massive campaign of brutal oppression has been launched by the Indian army since January 1990. Various estimates are given of the death toll of civilians so far. Making due allowance for unintended exaggerations, the figure runs into tens of thousands. Countless individuals have been maimed and thousands of women molested and assaulted. Despite a faint murmur of protest in the international press, India has felt no pressure whatsoever to desist from its semi-genocidal campaign. Not a word of condemnation has been uttered at the United Nations; not even a call on India to cease and desist from committing its atrocities. This is not merely a case of passivity and inaction; in practical effect, it amounts to abetment and encouragement of murderous tyranny.

The most baffling phenomenon regarding this situation is that it has been allowed to arise and to persist in a territory which, under international law, does not belong to any member state of the United Nations and whose status is yet to be decided by the people of that land. It is interesting to note that when the Kashmir dispute erupted in 1947-48, the United States championed the stand that the future status of Kashmir must be determined by the will of the people of the territory and that their wishes must be ascertained under the supervision and control of the United Nations. The U.S. was a principal sponsor of the resolution which was adopted by the Security Council on April 21, 1948 and which was based on that unchallenged principle. The basic formula for settlement was incorporated in the later resolutions. These are not resolutions in the routine sense of the term. Their provisions were negotiated in detail by the U.N. Commission on India and Pakistan (UNCIP), and it was only after the consent of both India and Pakistan was explicitly obtained that they were endorsed by the Security Council.

India has felt no pressure whatsoever to desist from its semi-genocidal campaign.

Words can only cheapen the acute grief and afflictions experienced by the entire Kashmiri population. And their pain is compounded by the silence and indifference of the international community, especially from the United States, that beacon of human rights and civil liberties. If the silence persists, there would seem two equally squalid explanations: a Kashmiri life is viewed as less worthy than other lives, a repugnant racism; or, nuclear powers sporting tempting economic markets enjoy immunity from human rights criticisms and sanctions.

Far from seeking to rectify its atrocious human rights record, India has legalized its state-sponsored terrorism in Kashmir. It has given its occupation forces powers to shoot to kill and the license to abuse the people of Kashmir in whatever ways they like in order to suppress the popular movement for basic human rights and human dignity.

All available evidence of India’s military activities in Kashmir indicates one thing: that the Indian forces are systematically targeting innocent people in Kashmir—men, women and children. They beat up the elderly, rape and defile women and young girls, raze villages, destroy families and murder young boys. These tactics have no military purpose whatsoever. Their only imaginable purpose is to terrorize a people into submission.

The abuses reach every man, woman and child in the Valley of Kashmir, who live under the constant threat of abuse. The overwhelming presence of 700,000 Indian military and paramilitary forces serves as a constant reminder to Kashmiris that they are not free people but a people subjugated and enslaved against their will. Harinder Baweja, an Indian Hindu journalist of India Today, said it well: “That everywhere there is pain in Kashmir. There is darkness everywhere. Kashmir has lost its magic.”

Four Incidents

Here are four incidents:

My very dear friend, chairman of the Kashmir Commission of Jurists Jalil Andrabi, was about to embark by air to attend a session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. But instead, he was carjacked by the Indian Border Security Forces and his corpse left floating in the Jehlum river. Mr. Andrabi’s body was mutilated beyond recognition. His assassination was meant as a grisly message to human rights proponents in Kashmir.
My cousin, Shabir Siddique, operated 200 educational schools in Kashmir. He was a scholar, not a soldier. He was quiet, not militant. He and 18 Kashmiri youths were abducted in November 1993, sealed in a house in Hazratbal, Srinagar, and were burned alive by the Indian military. When Shabir’s two sons and daughter ask today, “What was Daddy’s crime?” the silence from India speaks volumes.
Mubeena Begum, a newly married bride from Badasgam, Anantnag, was traveling to her husband’s home by bus on the day of their wedding. The Indian army stopped the bus, emptied it of guests, raped the bride and killed her husband.
A pregnant young woman, Zarifa Bano of Kunun Pushpora, Kupwara, was raped by four Indian soldiers, and gave birth to a physically impaired baby two weeks later.

How many Kashmiri women have to be molested before one concludes that a human rights violation has taken place? This is one of the questions that is on the minds of millions of Kashmiri women.

The constant disturbances in Kashmir have altered the life patterns of the inhabitants, radically changing the entire concept of childhood in the Valley. Schools have been converted to army camps. The children do not attend kindergarten and they do not play with toys, the way children normally do. Memories and recollections of their childhood are clouded with terror, anxiety, unrest, insecurity and uncertainty.

The suffering of the East Timorese and Kosovar Albanians properly evoked international outrage and action, by NATO in Kosovo and by an international force headed by Australia in East Timor. Multiply those sufferings 10-fold and you have Kashmir. But nothing is done.

Eighty percent of East Timorese voted for independence in September of 1999. Kashmiris voiced virtually universal opposition to Indian rule by a 92 percent boycott of the most recent parliamentary elections. To inflate polling figures, the Indian army employed bayonets in attempting to herd Kashmiris into voting booths. Furthermore, Kashmiris who could not display finger ink to testify to their voting risked retaliation or intimidation.

No democratic government in the world would accept the polling in Kashmir as a free and fair expression of popular will. Election boycotting is a traditional democratic method of peaceful political dissent protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. India, however, has outdone George Orwell in making peaceful dissent a crime, and has retaliated for the boycott by detaining the leadership of the All-Parties Hurriyet Conference in foreign prison cells thousands of miles away from their homeland. Here are the names of a few of the imprisoned political leaders:

Syed Ali Geelani
Mohammad Yasin Malik
Prof. Abdul Gani Bhat
Moulana Abbas Ansari
Shabir Ahmed Shah
M. Ashraf Sehrai
Javed A. Mir
Ghulam Ahmed Dar
Ghulam Mohammad Sankar
Abdul Ahad Waza
Musarat Alam
Mohammad Maqbool Sofi
Abdul Rashid Shigan
Qazi Ahadullah
Abdul Ahad Doontho
Azad Ahmed Bangroo
Ghulam Nabi Sumji
Khazir Mohammad Ganie
Ghulam Mohammad Hubbi
Shakeel Ahmed Bakshi

Is the lesson of Kashmir to be that a nuclear power with an attractive economic market can defy international law, human rights and morality with impunity? What would that do to the cause of non-proliferation? What would that do for the cause of humanity? What would that do for securing adherence to United Nations Security Council resolutions?

As long as the international community allows India to hide its atrocities in Kashmir, there will be no end to the ever-increasing gross and consistent human rights violations in that unfortunate land. As long as India is successful in isolating Kashmir from the rest of the world, and from the judgment of world opinion, India will not only continue to trample the Kashmiris’ basic rights and freedoms but will also block all peaceful processes for the restitution and restoration of these rights and freedoms. They will also try their best to block the punishment of the armed forces who are responsible for these crimes.

There are also many horrifying stories of the Kashmiri Hindu community, the Pandits, more than 100,000 of whom subsist in refugee camps outside their homeland. They, too, are clear victims of the tragedy of Kashmir. Jagmohan, the former governor of Kashmir who is now a cabinet minister in the Vajpayee government, wanted this minority community out to portray the independence movement in Kashmir as communal, and not one based on freedom and justice. But resistance to the occupation in Kashmir is not communal. Only Jagmohan made this Pandit community flee and desert Kashmir at its hour of trial.

The solution of these sufferings and pain in Kashmir is both urgent and vital. It is a far more populous and strategic area than other trouble spots in the world. The pain felt by the people of Kashmir is no less devastating than that felt by the people of East Timor. The mass rapes by the Indian occupation forces are no less humiliating in Kashmir than in Bosnia. The torture and imprisonment in Kashmir is no less intense than it was in Kosovo. In fact, the pain, suffering and humiliation in Kashmir is intensified because the people of Kashmir have been under occupation for over half a century.

The time has come for the United Nations to use its great moral authority in:

engaging all parties to the dispute—India, Pakistan and Kashmiri leaders—in a dialogue for a peaceful settlement;
making sure that these talks are accompanied by practical measures to restore an environment of nonviolence in Kashmir;
persuading the secretary-general to appoint a special envoy on Kashmir of international standing, like President Nelson Mandela or President Jimmy Carter or Lady Margaret Thatcher.

History will testify that a final solution of the Kashmir conflict, which is the underlying cause of the nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan, will undoubtedly bring peace and security not only to the region of Kashmir but to all of South Asia.

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai is the executive director of the Washington, DC-based Kashmiri American Council.