Srinagar: Indian forces are “maiming, blinding, and killing people” in Indian Illegally Occupied Kashmir (IIOJK) as they continue to defy international norms by using pellet guns as a means of crowd control, global watchdog Human Rights Watch (HRW) said.
Women, men and children living in IIOJK have “faced pellet guns, sexual assault, electrocution, and physical and mental torture” at the hands of Indian forces. The genocide in IIOJK continues unabated leaving a blotch on India’s face of a ‘so-called champion of human rights’.
Continuation of inhuman military siege, machinations to bring demographic changes and gross violations of HR and international laws are perpetuating humanitarian and security crises in IIOJ&K that imperils regional security. US State department released the 2020 country report on Human Rights includes 68 pages’ chapter on India highlighting the harassment of media outlets, declining press freedom and extra-judicial killings in Kashmir.
Indian security forces have “employed rape, torture, degrading treatment and killings of Kashmiri women as instruments of state terrorism.” Successive Indian governments have unleashed a hell of deprivations, siege, torture, humiliation, mass and gang rapes, forced disappearances and extra-judicial killing of Muslim Kashmiri youth while in custody. Guinness Book of World Records has declared Kashmir as the “planet’s largest militarized territorial dispute”. Brutalities in IIOJK reveals a data of 96,000 killings of Kashmiris, 20,000 plus each widows and 107,880 orphans, 6,000 mass graves and over 8,000 enforced disappearances. Indian forces have sexually assaulted and gang-raped more than 11,000 women in IIOJK during the past three decades.
Severe and prolonged restrictions on communication, arbitrary mass detentions of political leaders, denial of freedom of expression and access to information, targeting and reprisals against human rights defenders, as well as enactment of new laws including new Domicile Rules have further deteriorated human rights in Jammu and Kashmir.
Modi’s unilateral and illegal actions in IIOJK are in parallel with Israel’s illegal actions in Palestine. Muslim majority of IIOJK has been facing threat to its existence and religious identity due to Indian occupation of J&K for the past over seven decades. RSS-backed Modi regime is furthering its Hindutva ideology to convert Muslim majority in Kashmir into a minority and covert territory into a Hindu state. It is high time that the world must take effective notice of the stepped-up human rights violations in the troubled region and influence the government of India to resolve the lingering dispute of Kashmir that happens to be the main cause and consequence of unrest and bloodshed in the region. Web Desk
