WASHINGTON, Mar 23 (APP): The scale of Indian atrocities in Kashmir, as detailed in the recent US State Department human rights report, dwarfs what was witnessed in Bosnia and East Timor prior to international intervention, but in the case of people of Kashmir the world powers have just been silent spectators, a prominent Kashmiri leader said Thursday.
“That complacency gives the impression that Kashmiri lives and hopes are worth less than those of others,” Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Chairman of the ‘World Forum for Peace & Justice’, a Washington-based advocacy group, said in a statement.
The section on India in the report, which contains graphic documentation of human rights violations being committed by the occupation forces in Jammu & Kashmir, takes the secrecy veil off of India’s crimes against humanity. “Perhaps now the United Nations can share the outrage felt by the people of Kashmir.”
“It is well documented that the bloody occupation has resulted in massive human rights violations, particularly targeting women and children. The sanctity of women has been violated, in a gruesome and unforgiving fashion,” Fai said while commenting on the report in which several specific cases of rights abuses have been cited.
The State Department report says, “Women in Jammu and Kashmir, northeastern states, Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh, as well as vulnerable Dalit or tribal women, were often victims of rape or threats of rape.”
Dr. Fai warned that “Human rights will continue to be violated as long as political and civilian killings continue unabated, torture and rape remain widespread, civil liberties are suspended, and international human rights groups and United Nations Thematic Rapporteurs are prohibited from gaining access to Kashmir.”
In this regard, he urged the Biden Administration to insist on transparency in Kashmir to build moral suasion against the massive and systematic human rights violations in the disputed state perpetrated by Indian occupation forces with impunity.
