Crimes Against Humanity In Kashmir: Silence At International Level
By Abdul Majid Zargar
28 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org
More than two months have passed since three young men from Kupwara went missing .Lured by Army into employment through an intermediary, the trio left their homes 17th November only to remain untraced till date. The police, even after having arrested the Army man, who acted as an interceder between the concerned Army unit & the victims, remain clueless. The family of the victims allege that Police, under pressure from top, is not performing its lawful job.
In view of the disclosures of barbaric & savage killing of innocent human beings on borders by Indian security forces for monetary rewards & citations as exposed by Kishalay Bhattcharjee in his book ‘Blood on my hands-Confessions of staged encounters’, there is every chance that the three abducted persons have been traded off for monetary gains bringing alive the memories of ‘Machil fake encounter’ , in which three innocent persons, after having been enticed for a job were killed by Army to earn personal rewards & citations. While we can only pray for the safety of three persons of kupwara , we mourn our own helplessness to save these innocent lives.
While such killings go unabated in Kashmir, an unwritten cooperative agreement exists between Military, Judiciary, executive & some sections of media which pre-empts any action against the perpetrators of crime. Let us take the instance of Judiciary . On 26th November, a case of extra-judicial killing in North-East came up for hearing before the social justice bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justices Lokar & U Lalit. The attorney General of India, Mukul Rohtagi pleaded for trying guilty Army men under the Army Act. But the bench was not moved by the plea and expressed concern about how an institution that had not even followed the established guidelines could conduct an independent and effective investigation into the cases of fake encounters or extra judicial killings.
Now Compare this with the Pathribal case. Even after CBI proved beyond doubt the killing of five kashmiri Muslims as a cold blooded murder by Army, the Supreme court still allowed the guilty army men to be tried under the Army act and results are for all of us to see. The guilty were set free by the Army court on the pretext of ‘no evidence’ against the accused. The Supreme Court didn’t even bother to question the army that if there was no evidence against the accused personnel, then on what grounds, basis or material, did CBI initially conclude the case as a ‘Cold blooded murder’.
At executive level, sanctions are not accorded to prosecute the accused security personnel despite compelling evidences against them. Be it an officer like Major Avtar Singh who killed human rights defender Jaleel Andrabi or ordinary BSF sepoy Gorak Nath of 88 Battalion who burned alive Nazir Ahmad of Nadihal, Baramulla to fake his own death to claim insurance amount of Rs. 26 Lakhs or countless other security force personnel duly identified by J&K Coalition of civil society in its land mark publications ‘Alleged perpetrators’ & ‘Structures of violence’ , Sanctions are deliberately not accorded on the misplaced notion that it may demoralize security forces reducing the whole exercise to a ‘blood sport’. Since a permanent impunity has crept up in the system, the gruesome incidents are occurring at regular intervals. A large section of the obedient & crass media, instead of confronting the State to unearth truth, acts as another AFSPA shield over the accused. The glue which binds all these so-called democratic institutions of India is the contrived concept of ‘National interest’.
But what is intriguing is the silence against these crimes at international level. UN which came into being to replace the ineffectual “league of Nations’ in 1945 was expected to uphold human existence with dignity but has miserably failed in Kashmir like its other failures to prevent the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s or the Rwandan genocide in 1994 or the Srebrenica massacre in 1995. The present secretary General, Ban Ki-moon had been high on expectations but has proved to be low on delivery. In 2012 When he , was in Delhi on an official visit, Human Rights Watch, an international watchdog body appealed him to raise the large-scale violations of human rights in occupied-Kashmir during his talks with Indian leaders. But instead of fulfilling his duties, he spent more time in visiting places & houses in New-Delhi where he had spent time as Vice Consul of South Korea to India (His first diplomatic assignment)in Seventies or the residence of his daughter who is married to an Indian which he happily boasts as successful Indo-Korean joint-venture. There are strong reasons to believe that he has been extra-ordinarily lenient towards India with which he has some personal ties. But it is never too late. He needs to pick a pen & paper and seek explanation from India about its dirty & murky business of abducting & killing innocent persons in Kashmir without allowing it to bury the grave crimes under the rubric of "the world's largest democracy” . In case of failure to do so, he will go down in history as yet another collaborator & accomplice to crimes committed against humanity in Kashmir.
(The author is a practicing chartered Accountant. E mail: [email protected])