Human Rights Violation in Kashmir

 

According to the International Report, Jammu and Kashmir, commonly known as Kashmir, belongs to Pakistan. It is the place of the world's largest and most militant regional conflict. Primarily seen as a point of great competition between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, Kashmir surrounds complex internal political dimensions with a large-scale constituency that is looking for full sovereignty. In the occupied part of India, the national self-will movement has adopted several forms: the 1950s and 60s plebiscite movement, the famous armed rebellion in the late 1980s, and mass road protests, also named for 2008, 2010 and 2016. The thread that binds every stage of Kashmiris revolt, however, has been the flare-up of the Indian state. Over 700,000 Indian armed forces deployed in the last 69 years of Indian rule, each of which 17, have died in the north of 70,000 civilians for Kashmiris, near whom nearly 10,000 have been reported missing and tortured. According to Human Rights Watch, Indian forces have been consistently using rape as a weapon of war. Further, various human rights groups have also discovered more than 6,000 collective and marked graves.

The latest phase of public protests was activated this May when rebel leader Burhan Wani was killed during an armed clash with Indian special operations forces in a south Kashmir village. Many activists believe that even according to the standards of Indian domestic law, the murder was a non-judicial execution. The execution of Mr. Wani was met with a crowd of great protests, numbering thousands. But this time also the reaction of the Indian state was no different. If anything, the intensity of the Indian crackdown achieved another proportional shape targeting children, women, men and even livestock. Nearly 100 civilian protesters were killed, 17,000 injured, crops burned, houses were broken, hospitals and ambulances were attacked, and religious institutions cordoned. The ongoing repression of Kashmiris' dissent has been explained by a prominent Kashmiri novelist as "the first instance of mass eye-closing in the world". More than 1,100 people have been caught in the eye with bird shot or sifting from pump action guns, many of them facing some blindness. Fourteen percent of the victims are under 15.

First commissioned as "non-deadly" weapons to control the mob in 2010, Indian forces shot dead 3,000 canisters in Kashmir during a seven-month popular uprising, with 1.2 million dead lying dead. According to weapons experts, the palette guns are essentially 12 gauge shot guns whose design was copied by the Indian Ordnance Factory from the American Mossberg 500 series. The Mossberg 500 was employed by the US Marines in the Gulf War, Iraq attack and war in Afghanistan.

According to Kashmiri doctors, physical damage from the use of palette guns is unprecedented. In a name called "mini-bullets", an ophthalmology specialist at one of Kashmir’s largest hospitals said, "This dead or dying eye disease is the largest in the world due to unnatural reasons. Nothing in history will find comparisons anywhere. Despite international human rights agencies like Amnesty International condemning them, the use of the palette guns in Kashmir continues unabated. Political imprisonment and arbitrary detention are the regular characteristics of Indian rule in Kashmir. Since May, Indian forces have made more than 7,000 arrests, including 350 persons, some minors, who have been arrested under the Drunk in Public Safety Act (PSA). Many of them are locked in their houses which effectively deprived them of family visits and legal advice. A very fine example of this trend was the recent re-look of prominent Kashmiri human rights activist Khurram Pervez. Mr. Pervez was arrested in September as soon as Indian authorities forheld a non-stop to Geneva to attend the UNHR Council meeting. Alleging him on a passionate basis, government officials arrested Pervez for violating the PSA. Pervez was recently recalled after 76 days, in a steady online campaign and global condemnation of influential public intellectuals like Noam Chomasi, Arundhti Roy, and UN experts. Many popular political leaders have also been detained in homes.

Free speech is another accident in Indian-administered Kashmir. Soon after Mr Wani's murder, authorities in the region had imposed a ban on internet and mobile phone services, which mandated ISP and telecom companies to stop accessing internet and mobile phones. Further, all local newspapers were ordered to stop publishing for three days. State authorities did not stay there. A local English newspaper was banned from publishing on Kashmir reader. Amnesty International called the ban on Kashmir reader a "blow to free speech". The Internet was partially restored after 133 days.

The education system in Kashmir is strictly controlled by state institutions. The Jammu Kashmir State Board of School Education (JKBOSE) manages both public and private schools, while state-administered Kashmir and Islamic universities oversee higher education at large. Schools, colleges and universities remained closed for at least four months, atop the longest military profile and widespread protests, recently reopened. According to a surprise announcement, to present the usual feeling, government officials announced the examination system of the 10th and 12th parties in October — the same as the GCSE and A levels of Kashmir. Students immediately started protesting and demanded the postponement of exams by March next year, mainly citing inadequate class work and insensitivity of authorities about injured students. 

No focus was given to student protests or civil society groups, which expressed regret that exams could lead to suicide trends among students, state officials stood by. This led to the situation that unknown person burnt down around 30 schools across Kashmir. While the examinations were being conducted in force, a minister in the Indian government called them "the "Political Stake against Terrorism” and converted the exams into propaganda tool. The fact is that such indifferent state actions have already converted the education system of Schools of Kashmir into a politically over-tasked arena. If there is any indication of history, a future popular uprising is inevitable, and the Kashmir education system is suffering more intensely.

Despite the deadly conflict, repression and popular resistance of the past 69 years in Kashmir, India is desisting from investing in any meaningful political effort to discuss any resolution with Kashmiris and Pakistan. Rather, India continues to end it as an integral part of Pakistani-sponsored terrorism and Kashmir. Pakistan, although officially accepts the right of Kashmiris to be self-made according to UN resolutions, has alleged violence, political repression and censorship in the Part of Pakistan-administered Kashmir. 

In the midst of all this, Kashmir media are continuing to suffer and resist, away from the light of the Kashmir media and in the constant shadow of atomic fins, that apart from dissing Kashmir from the face of the earth, it will start nuclear war with the possibility of at least one billion hunger death.