Essay competition on Kashmir conflict

“Is it true Narendra Modi just boarded a flight to visit India?” Tweeted a critic of Indian Prime Minister’s globe-trotting jaunts. “Welcome home, Pradhan Mantriji! How long will you be staying this time?” Modi has already been to 33 countries just this year alone. The Donald Trump of South Asia, the man out to make India great again, a nationalist and sectarian, divisive at home but the man with the grand plan on the global stage, on June 7, 2016 marked his fourth visit to the U.S. since taking office in 2014.

The joint statement of Narendra Modi, the Prime Minister of India and President Obama on the occasion, noteworthy for its lack of any real substance, in part says, “…the leaders reviewed the deepening strategic partnership between the United States and India that is rooted in shared values of freedom, democracy, universal human rights, tolerance and pluralism, equal opportunities for all citizens, and rule of law.”

This flood was the first in history, in the living memory of Kashmir.  More than 450 people are dead, and more than $1bn in destruction has been estimated.  The actual magnitude of the total destruction, the number of dead and the people who are missing may not be known for some time. Kashmir Valley was cut off from the rest of the world for days.  Thousands of villages have been submerged, including the capitol city of Srinagar. Hundreds of thousands of people particularly in the rural areas still remain trapped without any outside help or rescue and relief. There has been a total breakdown in communication with no telephone contact of the people with their loved ones  Boats were not available.  People had to stand on their rooftops waiting for someone to rescue them.

“Kashmir is an integral part of India, constitutionally, legally and morally something that is non-negotiable.” Ram Jethmalani, Outlook Magazine, October 8, 2016.

“Let me state unequivocally that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and will always remain so.’ Sushma Swaraj September 26, 2016

The fallacy advocated by the most celebrated Indian jurist and the Indian foreign minister deserves some clarification.

The people of Jammu & Kashmir who number more than 129 other existing independent nations individually and have a defined historical identity, are at present engaged in a mass struggle to win freedom and release from the foreign occupation of their land. This struggle is motivated by no bigotry or ethnic prejudice; its aim is nothing but the exercise of the right of self-determination explicitly agreed by both India and Pakistan.

To the horrors of the repression from which they suffer are added two other circumstances, each cruelly adverse. One is the apathy of the world outside, including the United States that otherwise are justly proud of their championship of democracy and human rights. The second is the fog of myths and evasive arguments, like Kashmir being an integral part of India. It is my modest attempt to help mitigate these two circumstances. My appeal is directed neither to the religious or ideological sympathies of Indian Public Square nor to their leanings towards any particular political party but solely to their conscience and human concern.

One of the darkest chapters of Indian judicial partiality was left hanging half closed and banging in the wind when Major Avtar Singh, the killer of internationally known human rights activist and Chairman of Kashmir Commission of Jurists, Advocate Jalil Andrabi, was found dead after he killed his wife and two children, and finally himself this past Saturday morning, June 9, 2012, in Selma, California. Avtar Singh, a fugitive from justice, who lived in the hot dry central California community, a suburb of Fresno, was clearly haunted by his past, a past that had seen the blood spilled of more than one man by his own hands. He had killed four others to hide the murder of Andrabi, and now he had killed his own family.  

In killing Jalil Andrabi, Avtar Singh certainly did not act on his own volition. He was only a major.   His act was no doubt a response to orders from above and occurred in a longstanding climate of impunity that the Indian army enjoys in Kashmir.   The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which gives any Indian soldier the right in Kashmir to take a Kashmiri’s life under any circumstance, has enabled such a climate for decades.  And Jalil Andrabi had become a hated, despised man by the Army, a man dangerous to the status quo of continued murder and torture that had been taking place in Kashmir’s jails, interrogation centers and detention facilities for many years.  

March 17, 2014

Sir Nigel Rodley
Chairperson
UN Human Rights Committee
Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights
United Nations Office at Geneva
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
Fax: (41 22) 917 90 11
E-mail: CP@ohchr.org

Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

I am grateful for the opportunity to submit this testimony on the state of human rights in Kashmir to the 110th session of the United Nations Human Rights Committee being held in Geneva, Switzerland, this week until March 28, 2014. Much to my chagrin in light of the warming of diplomacy between India and Pakistan and incipient dialogue between India and Kashmiri leaders, the state of human rights in the disputed territory is chilling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience.

Indiscriminate killings:

The best estimate of extrajudicial killings in Kashmir since 1989 approaches a staggering 100,000. That number dwarfs the killings in Northern Ireland, Palestine, Bosnia, Kosovo and Southern Sudan which have brought the world to tears and revulsion. The 100,000 corpses also tops the death toll for United States forces in Vietnam over 10 years.

Arundhati Roy, an Indian novelist, essayist, the Booker Prize and Sydney Peace Prize winner said that “Caught in the middle are the people of Kashmir. More than 100,000 people, mostly innocent civilians, have died in the 20-year conflict.”