podolski11
PAIN
The REal KASHmir
assalamu alaykum,
The Crimes of the Indian occupation forces, numbering more than half a million, against the people of Kashmir have now reached genocidal proportions, presenting the worst example of state-sponsored terrorism. Because, the people of Jammu and Kashmir were pledged by no less an authority than the UN Security Council to exercise their right to decide their future under conditions free from coercion and intimidation. However, the peaceful movement of the Kashmiri people for the realization of this right and the respect for their fundamental human rights has been crushed with brute force.
Over the past six years, in particular, the suffering of the Kashmiri people has reached an indescribable intensity and magnitude. All human rights enshrined in the Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the human rights covenants have been flagrantly violated by the Indian security forces. Since October 1989, some 38,000 Kashmiris have been killed by the Indian occupation forces, over 5000 women (young and old) have been raped, thousands have been maimed and thousands have been thrown in jail without any recourse to legal action. Torture, extrajudicial executions, disappearances, willful destruction of property and forced displacement are the order of the day. Kashmiris, despite a virtual media blackout, have been trying to bring these horrors to the attention of the international community.
An iron curtain hangs across Kashmir as India refuses to allow visits by Amnesty International, International Educational Development and other human rights and humanitarian organizations. However, these restrictions notwithstanding, some commendable organizations have been able to document the abuses perpetrated by India in occupied Kashmir in report after report.
Security forces have also repeatedly raided hospitals and other medical facilities, even pediatric and obstetric hospitals. During these raids, the security personnel have forced doctors at a gunpoint to identify recent trauma patients. Because of their injuries, the security forces have suspected these patients of militant activity. Injured patients have been arrested from hospitals, in some cases after being disconnected from life-sustaining treatments. The security forces have also discharged their weapons within hospital grounds and inside hospitals, and have entered operating theatres and destroyed or damaged medical supplies, transports and equipment. Doctors and other medical staff frequently have been threatened, beaten and detained. Several have been shot dead while on duty; others have been tortured.
Many of those seeking medical care are released detainees who have been subjected to torture. In fact, virtually everyone taken into custody by the security forces in Kashmir is tortured. Torture is practised to coerce detainees to reveal information about suspected militants or to confess to militant activity. It is also used to punish detainees who are believed to support or sympathize with the militants and to create a climate of political repression. The practice of torture is facilitated by the fact that detainees are generally held in temporary detention centres, controlled by the various security forces, without access to the courts, relatives or medical care.
Methods of torture include severe beatings, electric shock, suspension by the feet or hands, stretching the legs apart, burning with heated objects and sexual molestation. One common form of torture involves crushing the leg muscles with a heavy wooden roller. [a] This practice results in the release of toxins from the damaged muscles that may cause acute renal (kidney) failure. This report documents a number of such cases which required dialysis. Since 1990, doctors in Kashmir have documented 37 cases of torture-related acute renal failure; in three cases the victims died.
Rapes:
On 23 February 1991, a particularly serious incident occurred in the mountain village of Kunan Poshpura. More that 800 soldiers of the 4th Rajput Regiment surrounded the village. They rounded up the men outside and then broke into
houses in search of arms. Many women were attacked. The delegation was told that somewhere between 23 and 60 women were raped in the course of that night.
We wished to investigate the nature and importance, as well as the socio-psychological and political details of the issue, by questioning women attacked by the Indian security forces.
We were able to identify seven cases of rape and one case of sexual molestation, where no sexual act occurred. The victims come from several villages in the Kashmir valley.
With regard to the testimonies of these women, as well as to information obtained from other women who related what they knew about the rape of neighbours or relatives, the following points should be made.
It cannot be said that the rape of Muslim women is a systematic or generalised practice. It is only carried out by the Indian security forces (there is no case of rape committed by either the police or by non-Muslim civilians). Rape is sometimes linked to pure acts of vengeance for colleagues killed or wounded by the militants. Sometimes it is simply gratuitous aggression combined with sadistic impulses, which may stem from a soldier's humiliating living conditions and from a general inhumane attitude towards unarmed civilians. It is often committed by soldiers under the influence of alcohol.
The most horrific sexual attacks occur when a family member is believed to belong to an armed militant group.
There are also cases of rape and/or sexual humiliations of various kinds which take place during the interrogation of suspected militants. Such acts may be committed against a family member forced to attend the interrogation in order that a maximum of information may be extracted. 4
It is not possible to confirm that rape is being used systematically by the Indian security forces as a weapon to provoke a mass exodus of the population. However, it is certain that army officers are turning a blind eye to catalogue of sexual attacks and that the security forces are acting with impunity.
It should be noted that young, unmarried women are sometimes taken away for days to the soldiers' camps. This practice is mentioned in the testimony of four women from different areas. Some of these young women, having become pregnant, have committed suicide, preferring to die rather than to dishonour their families.
In Jammu and Kashmir, para-military groups, especially the Border Security Forces (BSF), and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), are primarily responsible for unacknowledged detentions, "disappearances" and other human rights violations; a smaller number are perpetrated by the army. The police are rarely accused of committing them and are themselves reportedly critical of excesses committed by the security forces. Although all the security forces theoretically operate under the supervision of the Director General of the Jammu and Kashmir Police in practice the army and paramilitary forces act independently of the local police.
In Jammu and Kashmir, security forces routinely detain young men whom they suspect of supporting armed secessionists or to have either harboured militants or their arms and ammunition. Relatives of such people are also detained. In practice any young Muslim man living within a village, rural area or part of town noted for activities of any of the pro-independence or pro-Pakistan groups can become a suspect and a target for the large-scale and frequently brutal search operations described in Jammu and Kashmir as "crackdowns." These involve arbitrary arrests of dozens or even hundreds of people who are often tortured. Recent press reports indicate that "a catch 22" situation has developed; Kashmiris, who may not have been in favour of secession in the past, have become so alienated by what they perceive as the Indian Government's persistent sanctioning of grave human rights violations by the security forces in the state that their sympathies for secessionist groups have increased. This, in turn, makes virtually the whole population suspect in the eyes of the security forces. Police officer Kumar told Reuters on 19 April 1993: "Anyone who utters the word independence can be arrested. That means everyone."
In most cases, the victims of these killings are picked up during "crackdowns" -- cordon-and-search operations in which the security forces surround neighbourhoods or villages and compel all male adults and teen-aged boys to assemble for identification. Hooded informants point out alleged militants or militant sympathizers. Those pointed out are detained; almost inevitably, a certain number are executed within hours of their arrest. These executions are not aberrations; they are not occasional excesses of overzealous security officers. These killings are calculated and deliberate, and they are carried out as a matter of policy.
Human rights violations have risen dramatically in Jammu and Kashmir since late 1989, the start of the campaign for secession or for the state to join Pakistan. Many thousands of Kashmiris are arbitrarily detained under special laws that lack vital legal safeguards and provide the security forces with sweeping powers to arrest and detain. They are held for months or years without charge or trial. Torture by the security forces is a daily routine and so brutal that hundreds have died in custody as a result. Scores of women claim that they have been raped. Efforts by relatives to use legal avenues to obtain redress have been persistently frustrated: court orders to protect detainees are routinely flouted and the legal machinery in the state has broken down. A judge of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court said in October 1994 that the rule of law in the state had ceased to exist.
Initially, the authorities made hardly any efforts to disguise deaths in custody. The disfigured bodies of the victims were simply dumped on roads or in rivers, or were returned to the police or relatives. More recently, the government has sought to cover up such killings by attributing them to "encounters" between militants and the security forces, or claiming that the victims died in cross-fire. However, the government has consistently failed to provide any evidence to support its version of events, and in many cases there is incontrovertible evidence -- including from medical reports and the police -- that the victims died in the custody of the security forces.
The army and paramilitary forces continue to torture and kill detainees with virtual impunity. There is evidence that officials at the highest level condoned a "catch and kill" policy: suspected armed separatists picked up though "crackdowns" are shot dead rather than arrested and taken to court. Vital legal safeguards have been suspended under special laws which give the security forces broad powers to arrest and detain and to shoot to kill in contravention of international human rights standards. Special laws making the security forces immune from prosecution encourage them to act with impunity.
The Indian Government has proclaimed that its policy regarding Jammu and Kashmir is one of openness and transparency. However, it has consistently refused to cooperate meaningfully with United Nations mechanisms for human rights protection. United Nations experts on torture and extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary execution have not been invited to visit India as they requested and international human rights monitoring bodies such as Amnesty International continue to be denied access to the state.
The behaviour of the Indian occupation regime in Kashmir is singular in so far as it has enjoyed total immunity from restraint imposed through international action or persuasions. No word of disapproval, much less condemnation has been uttered by the international community. There has not been a call on India to cease and desist from the murderous course it has chosen for itself in Kashmir. Such passivity, such unfeeling and such indifference, let no one blame the Kashmiris for concluding, account to encouragement of tyranny.
The Kashmiris' demand is very simple. They want to be free of military occupation and to decide their future by a democratic vote, impartially supervised. A mechanism for the exercise of this right has already been defined by the United Nations Security Council, which was not only supported by Canada but co-sponsored, too. This mechanism needs to be activated and implemented.
The unbearable suffering of the people of Kashmir cannot be brought to an end, nor the constant danger to regional peace removed unless concerted pressure is brought on the Indian Government to turn to the path of sanity and civilized conduct. It would be in the long-term interest of India itself to settle the unresolved dispute of Kashmir.
assalamu alaykum,
The Crimes of the Indian occupation forces, numbering more than half a million, against the people of Kashmir have now reached genocidal proportions, presenting the worst example of state-sponsored terrorism. Because, the people of Jammu and Kashmir were pledged by no less an authority than the UN Security Council to exercise their right to decide their future under conditions free from coercion and intimidation. However, the peaceful movement of the Kashmiri people for the realization of this right and the respect for their fundamental human rights has been crushed with brute force.
Over the past six years, in particular, the suffering of the Kashmiri people has reached an indescribable intensity and magnitude. All human rights enshrined in the Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the human rights covenants have been flagrantly violated by the Indian security forces. Since October 1989, some 38,000 Kashmiris have been killed by the Indian occupation forces, over 5000 women (young and old) have been raped, thousands have been maimed and thousands have been thrown in jail without any recourse to legal action. Torture, extrajudicial executions, disappearances, willful destruction of property and forced displacement are the order of the day. Kashmiris, despite a virtual media blackout, have been trying to bring these horrors to the attention of the international community.
An iron curtain hangs across Kashmir as India refuses to allow visits by Amnesty International, International Educational Development and other human rights and humanitarian organizations. However, these restrictions notwithstanding, some commendable organizations have been able to document the abuses perpetrated by India in occupied Kashmir in report after report.
Security forces have also repeatedly raided hospitals and other medical facilities, even pediatric and obstetric hospitals. During these raids, the security personnel have forced doctors at a gunpoint to identify recent trauma patients. Because of their injuries, the security forces have suspected these patients of militant activity. Injured patients have been arrested from hospitals, in some cases after being disconnected from life-sustaining treatments. The security forces have also discharged their weapons within hospital grounds and inside hospitals, and have entered operating theatres and destroyed or damaged medical supplies, transports and equipment. Doctors and other medical staff frequently have been threatened, beaten and detained. Several have been shot dead while on duty; others have been tortured.
Many of those seeking medical care are released detainees who have been subjected to torture. In fact, virtually everyone taken into custody by the security forces in Kashmir is tortured. Torture is practised to coerce detainees to reveal information about suspected militants or to confess to militant activity. It is also used to punish detainees who are believed to support or sympathize with the militants and to create a climate of political repression. The practice of torture is facilitated by the fact that detainees are generally held in temporary detention centres, controlled by the various security forces, without access to the courts, relatives or medical care.
Methods of torture include severe beatings, electric shock, suspension by the feet or hands, stretching the legs apart, burning with heated objects and sexual molestation. One common form of torture involves crushing the leg muscles with a heavy wooden roller. [a] This practice results in the release of toxins from the damaged muscles that may cause acute renal (kidney) failure. This report documents a number of such cases which required dialysis. Since 1990, doctors in Kashmir have documented 37 cases of torture-related acute renal failure; in three cases the victims died.
Rapes:
On 23 February 1991, a particularly serious incident occurred in the mountain village of Kunan Poshpura. More that 800 soldiers of the 4th Rajput Regiment surrounded the village. They rounded up the men outside and then broke into
houses in search of arms. Many women were attacked. The delegation was told that somewhere between 23 and 60 women were raped in the course of that night.
We wished to investigate the nature and importance, as well as the socio-psychological and political details of the issue, by questioning women attacked by the Indian security forces.
We were able to identify seven cases of rape and one case of sexual molestation, where no sexual act occurred. The victims come from several villages in the Kashmir valley.
With regard to the testimonies of these women, as well as to information obtained from other women who related what they knew about the rape of neighbours or relatives, the following points should be made.
It cannot be said that the rape of Muslim women is a systematic or generalised practice. It is only carried out by the Indian security forces (there is no case of rape committed by either the police or by non-Muslim civilians). Rape is sometimes linked to pure acts of vengeance for colleagues killed or wounded by the militants. Sometimes it is simply gratuitous aggression combined with sadistic impulses, which may stem from a soldier's humiliating living conditions and from a general inhumane attitude towards unarmed civilians. It is often committed by soldiers under the influence of alcohol.
The most horrific sexual attacks occur when a family member is believed to belong to an armed militant group.
There are also cases of rape and/or sexual humiliations of various kinds which take place during the interrogation of suspected militants. Such acts may be committed against a family member forced to attend the interrogation in order that a maximum of information may be extracted. 4
It is not possible to confirm that rape is being used systematically by the Indian security forces as a weapon to provoke a mass exodus of the population. However, it is certain that army officers are turning a blind eye to catalogue of sexual attacks and that the security forces are acting with impunity.
It should be noted that young, unmarried women are sometimes taken away for days to the soldiers' camps. This practice is mentioned in the testimony of four women from different areas. Some of these young women, having become pregnant, have committed suicide, preferring to die rather than to dishonour their families.
In Jammu and Kashmir, para-military groups, especially the Border Security Forces (BSF), and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), are primarily responsible for unacknowledged detentions, "disappearances" and other human rights violations; a smaller number are perpetrated by the army. The police are rarely accused of committing them and are themselves reportedly critical of excesses committed by the security forces. Although all the security forces theoretically operate under the supervision of the Director General of the Jammu and Kashmir Police in practice the army and paramilitary forces act independently of the local police.
In Jammu and Kashmir, security forces routinely detain young men whom they suspect of supporting armed secessionists or to have either harboured militants or their arms and ammunition. Relatives of such people are also detained. In practice any young Muslim man living within a village, rural area or part of town noted for activities of any of the pro-independence or pro-Pakistan groups can become a suspect and a target for the large-scale and frequently brutal search operations described in Jammu and Kashmir as "crackdowns." These involve arbitrary arrests of dozens or even hundreds of people who are often tortured. Recent press reports indicate that "a catch 22" situation has developed; Kashmiris, who may not have been in favour of secession in the past, have become so alienated by what they perceive as the Indian Government's persistent sanctioning of grave human rights violations by the security forces in the state that their sympathies for secessionist groups have increased. This, in turn, makes virtually the whole population suspect in the eyes of the security forces. Police officer Kumar told Reuters on 19 April 1993: "Anyone who utters the word independence can be arrested. That means everyone."
In most cases, the victims of these killings are picked up during "crackdowns" -- cordon-and-search operations in which the security forces surround neighbourhoods or villages and compel all male adults and teen-aged boys to assemble for identification. Hooded informants point out alleged militants or militant sympathizers. Those pointed out are detained; almost inevitably, a certain number are executed within hours of their arrest. These executions are not aberrations; they are not occasional excesses of overzealous security officers. These killings are calculated and deliberate, and they are carried out as a matter of policy.
Human rights violations have risen dramatically in Jammu and Kashmir since late 1989, the start of the campaign for secession or for the state to join Pakistan. Many thousands of Kashmiris are arbitrarily detained under special laws that lack vital legal safeguards and provide the security forces with sweeping powers to arrest and detain. They are held for months or years without charge or trial. Torture by the security forces is a daily routine and so brutal that hundreds have died in custody as a result. Scores of women claim that they have been raped. Efforts by relatives to use legal avenues to obtain redress have been persistently frustrated: court orders to protect detainees are routinely flouted and the legal machinery in the state has broken down. A judge of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court said in October 1994 that the rule of law in the state had ceased to exist.
Initially, the authorities made hardly any efforts to disguise deaths in custody. The disfigured bodies of the victims were simply dumped on roads or in rivers, or were returned to the police or relatives. More recently, the government has sought to cover up such killings by attributing them to "encounters" between militants and the security forces, or claiming that the victims died in cross-fire. However, the government has consistently failed to provide any evidence to support its version of events, and in many cases there is incontrovertible evidence -- including from medical reports and the police -- that the victims died in the custody of the security forces.
The army and paramilitary forces continue to torture and kill detainees with virtual impunity. There is evidence that officials at the highest level condoned a "catch and kill" policy: suspected armed separatists picked up though "crackdowns" are shot dead rather than arrested and taken to court. Vital legal safeguards have been suspended under special laws which give the security forces broad powers to arrest and detain and to shoot to kill in contravention of international human rights standards. Special laws making the security forces immune from prosecution encourage them to act with impunity.
The Indian Government has proclaimed that its policy regarding Jammu and Kashmir is one of openness and transparency. However, it has consistently refused to cooperate meaningfully with United Nations mechanisms for human rights protection. United Nations experts on torture and extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary execution have not been invited to visit India as they requested and international human rights monitoring bodies such as Amnesty International continue to be denied access to the state.
The behaviour of the Indian occupation regime in Kashmir is singular in so far as it has enjoyed total immunity from restraint imposed through international action or persuasions. No word of disapproval, much less condemnation has been uttered by the international community. There has not been a call on India to cease and desist from the murderous course it has chosen for itself in Kashmir. Such passivity, such unfeeling and such indifference, let no one blame the Kashmiris for concluding, account to encouragement of tyranny.
The Kashmiris' demand is very simple. They want to be free of military occupation and to decide their future by a democratic vote, impartially supervised. A mechanism for the exercise of this right has already been defined by the United Nations Security Council, which was not only supported by Canada but co-sponsored, too. This mechanism needs to be activated and implemented.
The unbearable suffering of the people of Kashmir cannot be brought to an end, nor the constant danger to regional peace removed unless concerted pressure is brought on the Indian Government to turn to the path of sanity and civilized conduct. It would be in the long-term interest of India itself to settle the unresolved dispute of Kashmir.
that would be...*gulp* (even if my family never read this post 
...lol) 
