Qaisar Mansoor
The history of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) is littered with several carnages, including of ‘Chota bazar’ that tells a horrendous story of violence carried out by the Indian forces with impunity.
The memories of Chotta Bazaar carnage, one of the most brutal massacres by Indian troops in the territory, still haunt the Kashmiris even after the passage of over three decades.
On June 11 on the completion of 31 years to the deadly massacre at Chotta Bazaar in Srinagar said that on this day in 1991, the Indian paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) went berserk after an alleged clash with unknown attackers at Zainakadal in the city. It said, the troops opened indiscriminate fire with their automatic weapons all the way from their camp at Syed Mansoor to Chotta Bazaar in the densely populated downtown area of Srinagar. At least 32 people were killed while 22 others were injured in the carnage. The bullets hit shopkeepers, passerby, a 75-year-old woman and a child of ten years age.
The aim of committing Chotta Bazaar like carnages is to instill fear among the Kashmiris. India continues to brutalize the defenceless Kashmiris in IIOJK through extra-judicial killings in fake “encounters” and staged “cordon-and-search” operations, custodial torture and imposition of collective punishment.
Since 1989, more than 90,000 people killed, 22,944 women widowed and 11,255 are molested by brutal Indian forces. These atrocities cannot break the will of the Kashmiri people in their just struggle for the inalienable right to self-determination as enshrined in the relevant UNSC Resolutions. Massacres in IIOJK are ugly blots on the face of so-called Indian democracy and the international community must take notice of Kashmiris’ genocide by India. Time has shown that the war crimes of India cannot be hidden from the world.
Pakistan urges the international community to hold India accountable for its grave human rights violations in the occupied territory, which warrant investigations under international scrutiny to bring the perpetrators of these serious crimes to justice. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has also in its reports of 2018 and 2019 recommended the establishment of Commission of Inquiry (COI) to investigate gross and systematic human rights violations in IIOJK.
