Indian occupied Kashmir: Pakistan for enhanced international monitoring of rights crisis

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday called for an enhanced international monitoring of the human rights crisis in the Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJ&K), as the United Nations Special Rapporteurs made public their third report on Kashmir, expressing grave concern over excessive use of force, and ill-treatment during arrests and detentions.

"Pakistan wishes to underscore the importance of growing international concern over the grave and systematic human rights abuses being perpetrated by Indian security forces against Kashmiris in the IOJ&K," Foreign Office spokesperson Aisha Farooqui said.

The Foreign Office spokesperson's statement comes following four UN Special Rapporteurs on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment; on extra-judicial, summary or arbitrary executions; on minority issues; and on freedom of religion or belief, had forwarded a joint communication to India on May 4, 2010, and made it public recently, after 60 days of response time.

It was followed by a joint statement by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the World Organization against Torture (OMCT) on Friday, highlighting a range of human rights violations, including of freedom of association and assembly, in India's repression of peaceful protests and the impact of the Covid-19 measures in the country.

"We are particularly alarmed over the increasingly violent repression of dissent in India and the arbitrary detention and harassment of activists and human rights defenders by the state in relation to their participation in peaceful protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA), the National Population Register and the National Register of Citizens," reads the joint statement of the ICJ and the OMCT.

In her response, Aisha Farooqui pointed out that the 2018 and 2019 UN Kashmir reports provided a window to the world about the scale of India's human rights violations, aided and abetted by hundreds of thousands of occupation forces and draconian laws.

"Ever since its unlawful and unilateral actions in the occupied territory on 5 August 2019, the magnitude of India's human rights abuses has reached new heights of brutality, impunity and shame," she said.

She pointed out that this was marked by more than 11 months of unabated military siege in the IOJ&K, communications blockade, extra-judicial killings in fake "encounters" and so-called cordon-and-search operations, "collective punishment' of entire communities and neighborhoods, and crimes against humanity.

"India's international scrutiny and censure continues to grow and its dismal disregard of human dignity, fundamental rights and freedoms is being meticulously documented by human rights and civil society organisations, international media and parliamentarians," she asserted.

She said that the UN human rights machinery had consistently spotlighted India's non-compliance with its international human rights obligations.

Through several official communications, she added that nearly a dozen UN Special Rapporteurs had regularly raised serious concerns over India's consistent pattern of arbitrary arrests, detentions, torture, corporal punishment, extra-judicial killings, and physical and digital lockdown in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Despite these global indictments, she said that India continued to persist in a mode of defiance and denial.

"It [India] rejected the two Kashmir reports and refuses to grant access to any independent international observer, organization and media to investigate the gross human rights violations," she added. In fact, she added that India had heightened its repression in the IOJ&K taking advantage of the world's preoccupation with the Covid-19 pandemic.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020