Ambassador Yusuf Buch: A Living Legend

New York. July 28, 2015. Ambassador Yusuf Buch is resting comfortably at his home. A delegation comprising Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai and Dr. A. R. Meer enquired about his health at his residence…

“This is the victory of justice and every Kashmiri hails the decision of American court,” said Prime Minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir Chaudhry Abdul Majeed while talking to The Express Tribune.

Dr Fai is the ambassador of Kashmiris right to self-determination who has sacrificed a lot for the promotion of Kashmir cause, he said.

The Federal Court Eastern Virginia in its release orders issued Friday said Dr Fai exhibited good morals during his imprisonment and he has been working for the cause of Kashmiri nation.

“Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.” George Bernard Shaw

It is tragic that civilized nations have fallen from their lofty calling: namely, human rights for all mankind. There is a sad commentary on the state of human rights all over the globe. It seems to me that until there evolves a generally accepted moral duty among peoples and nations to assist all victims of widespread human rights violations by force or other stiff retaliation, human rights enforcement mechanisms will operate haphazardly and whimsically for reasons unrelated to the harm to the victims or the villainy of the perpetrators. It is the job of all human rights defenders to jump-start that moral evolution.

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.