The US State Department's annual assessment for 2010 of the state of human rights in the world notes the commission of gross human rights violation in the Indian-held Jammu and Kashmir. It says there were numerous reports that the government and its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings, including extra-judicial killings of suspected criminals and terrorists in Kashmir.
Detailing some cases of killings, it mentions a grim May 2009 incident wherein relatives and the police had discovered the bodies of two young women in a stream in the Shopian district of Jammu and Kashmir. Local residents and doctors who examined the bodies had said that the security forces had gang-raped and killed the two women. The incident, it may be recalled, had ignited widespread demonstrations in the Valley, with the security forces firing into crowds and killing several protesters.
In spite of the media attention the case received, no attempt was made by the government to bring the culprits to book. Instead, when the victims' families approached the Srinagar High Court, the police and CBI colluded to declare that no foul play was involved and that the women had died of drowning. The grim reality, as pointed out by various human rights organisations, including Amnesty International, is that for several years now the Indian security forces have been systematically employing gang rape as a weapon of war.
There are thousands of cases of gang rape, extra-judicial killings, and demolition of houses recorded by various human rights groups. New Delhi, of course, is complicit in all these crimes. It enacted laws that give security agencies Kashmir-specific special powers to search and arrest without warrant and the authority to detain people, without charge or trial, for up to one year.
Many young people so detained ended up dying from torture in hospitals or while in custody. One of the key demands of the Kashmir leaders, therefore, is a major scaling down of India's military presence in the Valley as a confidence building measure. Understandably, they want this measure to precede any meaningful negotiations on the bigger issue of Kashmir's future.
As noted earlier, for several years now, various internationally respected human rights groups have been regularly recording and reporting grave human rights violations at the hands of the Indian security forces in Occupied Kashmir. Rights groups and conscientious citizens within India itself, like the famous writer and activist Arundhati Roy, too, have been expressing concern over crimes perpetrated by the Indian army and paramilitary outfits.
Unfortunately, however, although human rights figure prominently in the US policy statements, and the issue is regularly raised in bilateral relations with otherwise friendly countries, such as China and Russia, Washington has never publicly brought up the subject with India. It needs to pay heed to its own State Department report and offer some advice to New Delhi as well.
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