HRW
Documents Repression
In Kashmir
By Parwini Zora &
Daniel Woreck
01 December 2006
World
Socialist Web
A
recent report by the US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) documents the
systematic human rights abuses carried out by the Indian security forces
in the state of Jammu and Kashmir with the protection of the Indian
government and legal system.
HRW conducted research for
the report, entitled
“Everyone Lives in Fear: Patterns of Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir,”
from 2004 to February 2006 in Indian-controlled Kashmir. It was the
first time since 1989 that the Indian government had allowed an international
human rights body to visit and report on the state. HRW also conducted
research in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir in 2005 and 2006.
The report provides detailed
accounts and interviews implicating the Indian security forces in torture,
disappearances, arbitrary detentions and summary executions, which are
concealed as “encounter killings”.
The report stressed that
the estimated 700,000 Indian soldiers and paramilitaries in Kashmir
carry out widespread repression with impunity. Indian laws protect members
of the armed forces and civilian officials involved in crimes against
Kashmiris. Soldiers responsible for murders and torture are rarely investigated
or held accountable for their crimes.
The Asian director of Human
Rights Watch, Brad Adams, told the press in September: “Human
rights abuses have been a cause as well as a consequence of the insurgency
in Kashmir.... Kashmiris continue to live in constant fear because perpetrators
of abuses are not punished. Unless the Indian authorities address the
human rights crisis in Jammu and Kashmir, a political settlement of
the conflict will remain illusory.”
The report also covers in
significant detail the massacres, bombings and political killings committed
by various armed groups opposed to Indian rule of Kashmir. While HRW
equates the violence of the Indian military and that of the militants,
the outbreak of the armed conflict in the late 1980s resulted from decades
of oppressive, anti-democratic Indian rule of the majority Muslim state.
The continuing conflict in
Kashmir underlines the inherently reactionary character of the 1947
partition of British India into the current Muslim Pakistan and a Hindu-dominated
India. The division of the subcontinent along artificial boundaries
that cut across national, ethnic and language groupings laid the groundwork
for future conflicts and wars that resulted in some 2 million deaths,
turned millions more into refugees and divided the Kashmiri region into
Indian and Pakistani-held areas.
Subsequently, successive
Indian governments have proved incapable of meeting the aspirations
of the Kashmiri Muslims for genuine democratic rights and decent living
standards. Seeking to ensure Indian domination over Kashmir, the Indian
elite rescinded an agreement to give more autonomy to the state. Kashmiris
began to take up arms in the late 1980s after the Indian government
blatantly rigged state elections in Jammu and Kashmir
Since 1989, at least 20,000
Kashmiri civilians have been killed as a result of the armed conflict
and tens of thousands more have been injured according to the HRW report.
About 300,000 Hindu Kashmiris have been internally displaced and another
30,000 Muslim Kashmiris have fled to neighbouring Pakistan as refugees.
The report cited evidence
of summary killings of suspected militants. Police and army officials
told HRW that detained suspects were often executed rather than being
brought to jail, on the grounds that “keeping hardcore militants
in gaol is a security risk”. The deaths were often falsely recorded
as the result of “encounter killings”. One example was the
case of five men shot supposedly in an armed “encounter”.
While the army and police claimed the men were responsible for the massacre
of 36 Kashmiri Sikhs in 2000, forensic tests later showed the men to
be innocent local villagers.
Indian security forces have
extensive powers under the Jammu and Kashmir Disturbed Areas Act and
the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act to use lethal
force against anyone “who is acting in contravention of any law
or order for the time being in force in the disturbed area”. The
report cited an incident on February 23, 2006 in which soldiers in Handawara
shot at a group of people playing cricket because they suspected that
a Kashmiri separatist was among them. Four boys, including an eight-year-old,
were killed.
Kashmiri human rights defenders
estimate that over 8,000 Kashmiris have simply “disappeared”
since 1989. Most were last seen in the custody of Indian troops, who
in turn denied holding the person. Many were tortured and then executed.
One case involved Manzoor
Ahmed Mir, a 37-year-old state employee. A group of soldiers accompanied
by three masked men took him away on September 12, 2004. Manzoor’s
brother recognised the men as a police sub-inspector, with whom Manzoor
had quarrelled, and the sub-inspector’s two sons. Manzoor’s
family filed a habeas corpus petition in the Srinigar High Court but
by February 2006 the police and army had not responded.
The HRW report stated that
thousands of Kashmiris have been arbitrarily and illegally detained.
One of India’s Additional Advocate Generals recently stated there
were 4,500 suspected militants awaiting trial in jail. Many have been
held for 10 years or more without being brought before a court. Indian
authorities often detain Kashmiris under the Jammu and Kashmir Public
Safety Act, which allows for detention without trial for up to two years,
because they have no evidence of guilt.
Many people have been detained
beyond two years by simply rolling over preventative detention orders.
Amnesty International reported on the case of Farooq Ahmad Dar, who
was detained in November last year under his ninth consecutive PSA order.
He has been in continuous detention since 1991.
Based on information from
Mian Abdul Qayoom, president of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar
Association, HRW reported that individuals had filed at least 60,000
habeas corpus petitions since 1990 to contest detentions or “disappearances”.
However, according to HRW, there are few, if any, cases in which “officials
have been held responsible for failing to respond in a timely manner
to a court order in a habeas corpus case or for failing to release a
detainee pursuant to a court order in Jammu and Kashmir”.
Those in state custody are
commonly tortured. “Relatives of militants are also taken into
custody and tortured, either to discover the whereabouts of a suspect,
or as a way of forcing the militant to surrender,” the report
stated. The brother of a wanted Kashmiri told HRW that Indian forces
had beaten him and given him electric shocks while in custody to try
to force his brother to surrender. The torture only stopped when soldiers
killed his brother.
Legal immunity
Most cases of serious human
rights abuse in the Jammu and Kashmir region are not officially investigated.
In the rare instances where abuses are probed, there has not been a
single individual in the Indian army, paramilitary or the police convicted
of a criminal offence. In fact, since 1989 only 134 army personnel,
79 members of the Border Security Force and 60 policemen have been subjected
to “disciplinary action”.
There is no civilian control
over the proceedings of the military justice system. In addition, the
provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code of 1973 protect any member
of the armed forces from arrest for “anything done or purported
to be done by him in the discharge of his official duties except after
obtaining the consent of the central government”.
Section 197(2) of the Criminal
Procedure Code is a sweeping immunity provision that applies throughout
India. In the words of the HRW report, this code “makes it mandatory
for a prosecutor to obtain permission from the federal government to
initiate criminal proceedings against public servants, including armed
forces personnel”. According to Amnesty International, the Jammu
and Kashmir government had made almost 300 requests for permission to
prosecute last year, but none were granted.
Security forces have used
the Jammu and Kashmir Disturbed Areas Act and the Armed Forces (Jammu
and Kashmir) Special Powers Act to justify firing indiscriminately on
peaceful demonstrations, including protests in January and October 1990
in Srinagar and in 1993 in Beijbehara.
The HRW report is one more
account of the widespread and sustained use of repression for over a
decade in Jammu and Kashmir. There is no reason to believe that the
current Congress-led government in New Delhi will take any more notice
of its recommendations than any of the previous calls for justice.
The report underscores the
fact that in India, which is commonly referred to as the world’s
largest democracy, the systematic abuse of basic democratic rights is
widespread.
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