Kashmir | News & Discussions.

[DaRk WaVe]

Blue Boy turn ur binoculars here


Indian Army and Police Tied to Kashmir Killings-NYT

SRINAGAR, Kashmir, Feb. 3 — Amid a grove of poplar trees in a village just north of here, a grave was unearthed Thursday afternoon. Out came the body of a man, shot dead nearly two months ago, whom the Indian police described at the time as an anti-Indian militant from Pakistan.

An elderly man, who had been searching for his missing son for nearly two months, was summoned for the exhumation. He stared at the horror dug out of the ground and told the police what he had refused to believe all this time. “He is my son,” he said. Then he sat on the bare ground and shook.

As it turned out, the dead man, Abdul Rehman Paddar, was not a Pakistani at all, nor a militant. He was a Kashmiri carpenter from a village south of here. The Indian police are now investigating whether he was killed by some of their own men, for motives that could range from personal revenge to greed. A suspected militant’s body, after all, comes with a handsome cash reward. By Saturday, four police officers were under arrest in connection with Mr. Paddar’s killing.

S. M. Sahai, the chief of police for Kashmir, said his investigators were looking into whether at least two other bodies were part of the same ring; setups like the killing of Mr. Paddar are known here as “encounter killings.” Each of the victims had been killed in operations conducted jointly by the police and either an Indian Army unit or a paramilitary force that operates under army command, he said.

By the end of the day on Saturday, as the investigation snowballed, a total of five bodies had been exhumed, all in the area surrounding Sumbal, and their identities were being checked.

The exhumations have not only unearthed a deep well of resentment among the people of Indian-administered Kashmir, but have also forced the Indian government to face anew long-simmering charges of abuse by Indian soldiers and the police.

Kashmiris have long accused the Indian authorities of disappearances and extrajudicial killings; one local human rights group estimates that 10,000 people have disappeared since the anti-Indian insurgency began here in 1989. Nor have civilians been immune to the savagery of militants; beheadings are among their favored tactics.

India blames its rival and neighbor, Pakistan, for aiding and arming the insurgents. Pakistan denies the charge, and does not recognize India’s claim to Kashmir. Claimed by both countries, Kashmir has been a center of strife for nearly 60 years.

While the violence has calmed considerably since a 2004 peace deal between India and Pakistan, it has hardly ended the bloodshed or diminished the presence of Indian troops here. India says troop reduction can begin only when the militants lay down their weapons.

Those troops have been blamed repeatedly for human rights abuses here, most recently by a 156-page report released last October by Human Rights Watch, which detailed dozens of cases in which, it said, the state had failed to hold its security forces accountable for suspected abductions, killings and detentions.

Among the most infamous of those cases were the March 2000 killings in the southern village of Pathirabal of five men, whom the army identified as foreign terrorists responsible for a massacre of Sikh civilians. The men, whose bodies had been burned and badly mutilated, turned out to be civilians abducted by the army, according to relatives and a subsequent federal investigation.

In a rare instance of prosecution, five Indian soldiers were charged with the killings, but the case remains stuck in the courts nearly seven years later, and the accused remain on the job. The army insists that they be tried by an internal court martial, and not a civilian court.

Human Rights Watch blamed the Indian government for what it called its “lack of commitment” to accountability and a series of Indian laws that shield soldiers in conflict zones like Kashmir. “This has led to a serious climate of impunity,” the report concluded.

Indian officials have explicitly sought to use the latest cases of encounter killings to rebut accusations of impunity, pointing out that they have taken the lead in investigating army and police officials linked to what they call isolated abuses of power.

“This is an aberration,” Mr. Sahai, the police chief, said in an interview in his office here in the summer capital of Indian-run Kashmir. “This is not the rule. We have not tried to suppress anything. Whatever are the facts of the case have come out in the open. If we are trying to set our house in order, that should increase public confidence.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/06/world/asia/06kashmir.html

 

[blueoval79]

^^^^


Well lady I did some search for you...:

Please go to this link and read...
Human Rights watch report.....read fully ....

"Everyone Lives in Fear" | Human Rights Watch

It gives you both sides of the story...... And yes it Claims ..some figure on Army presence....and backs it up with a link to a Book......

But as far as I know...Pakistanis are not happy with human Rights group....they are not considered good in Pakistan...I wonder why this report by HRW ..holds so much ground in Pkaistan....even though Human Rights Activists are not respected and some times called names ..

 

[Spring Onion]

Mass Graves Uncovered In Indian Kashmir

The Associated Press



Rights workers have discovered several unmarked graves containing about 1,500 unidentified bodies in Indian Kashmir, a prominent rights group said Thursday, alleging that some of corpses were likely innocent people killed by government forces.Researchers from the Association of Parents of Disappeared People, or APDP, which represents relatives of people who have disappeared in the violence, says at least eight of the graves held more than one body.
An Indian official said the bodies were likely those of militants killed over the past 20 years in fighting for control of the Himalayan region. But the government has also opened an investigation into such graves.

We have found more graves of about 1,500 people buried as unidentified in three remote districts during our ongoing survey. We've found that at least eight are mass graves as they contain more than one body.
- Pervez Imroz, lawyer for the Association of Parents of Disappeared People
Separatist groups there are fighting for the Indian-controlled portion's independence from predominantly Hindu India or its merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan. More than 68,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the uprising and the subsequent Indian crackdown.
Last year in a report titled, "Facts Under Ground" APDP had reported finding the unmarked graves of about 1,000 people near Uri, an area near the de facto frontier that divides Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and referred to as Line of Control.
"We have found more graves of about 1,500 people buried as unidentified in three remote districts during our ongoing survey," Pervez Imroz, the group's lawyer, said in an interview Thursday. "We've found that at least eight are mass graves as they contain more than one body."
The latest report from the districts of Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipore is part of the APDP's ongoing survey of the northern parts of Indian Kashmir, which is near the Line of Control and will eventually broaden to the rest of the state.
After last year's revelations, Amnesty International called for an independent probe into the unmarked graves.
On Thursday, Ramesh Gopalakrishnan, a researcher on the London-based rights group's South Asia team, said there had been no "responsible and serious" response on the subject by either the state or federal governments.


Indian authorities had dismissed the earlier revelations but this year the State Human Rights Commission, a government body formed after widespread allegations of human rights abuses by the army, paramilitary and police in the state, sought information on the issue.

"The state government has yet to respond to our notice," said Farooq Ahmed, an official of the commission said Thursday.
All the state officials reached by the Associated Press declined to comment on the subject.

However, one senior police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said authorities launched an investigation last year when the revelations were first made. "Hundreds of foreign militants have been killed since the militancy started, and many of them have died in gunbattles on borders. Everyone knows they have been buried as unidentified," he said.

Human rights workers have complained for years that innocent people have disappeared, been killed by government forces in staged gunbattles, and suspected rebels have been arrested and never heard from again.
Rights groups say there have been an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 disappearances since the anti-India rebellion began in 1989.


Anti-India sentiment runs deep in Kashmir, a region divided between India and Pakistan, but claimed by both.
The government says most of the people who disappeared are Kashmiri youths who crossed into neighboring Pakistan for weapons training.
The state government said Monday that 3,429 people have disappeared from their homes while 110 others disappeared from the custody of government forces in the past two decades.

 

[abdulalimkhan]

They also call Gandhi as martyr. Their understanding is different than ours.

Ya its right. Even our thoughts are different than yours.

 

[Spring Onion]

Ya its right. Even our thoughts are different than yours.

Everyone has a different thoughts whats so special about it. Nothing new.

 

[Aslan]

India-Pakistan Partition 1947

Here is a link from a neutral source and it clearly tells where there were bad things done by both the sides, and especially how the state of Pakistan was Mega S(R@wed to accomadate India and manny ares that were to be PAkistan were handed over to India jut to get them access to Kashmir.

 

[blueoval79]

India-Pakistan Partition 1947

Here is a link from a neutral source and it clearly tells where there were bad things done by both the sides, and especially how the state of Pakistan was Mega S(R@wed to accomadate India and manny ares that were to be PAkistan were handed over to India jut to get them access to Kashmir.

Good link...but tell where does this article provide information on Muslims being Massacred in Kashmir in 1947......

 

[Aslan]

Good link...but tell where does this article provide information on Muslims being Massacred in Kashmir in 1947......

I think Emo already gave you a link for that

 

[pakomar]

so this show the freedom fighter of kashmir are still there and they are gun down by indian army ..

 

[Spring Onion]

so this show the freedom fighter of kashmir are still there and they are gun down by indian army ..

They gun down every Kashmiri as long as he is against Indian occupation

 

[Spring Onion]

Disquiet Ghosts: Mass graves in Kashmir
Dr. Angana Chatterji
09 July, 2008


Dirt, rubble, thick grass, hillside and flatland, crowded with graves. Signifiers of military and paramilitary terror, masked from the world. Constructed by institutions of state to conceal massacre. Placed next to homes, fields, schools, an army practise range. Unknown, unmarked. Over 940 graves in a segment of Baramulla district alone. Some containing more than one cadaver. Dug by locals, coerced by the police, on village land. Bodies dragged through the night, some tortured, burnt, desecrated. Circulating mythology claims these graves uniformly house ‘foreign militants’. Exhumation and identification have not occurred in most cases. When undertaken, in sizable instances, records prove the dead to be local people, ordinary citizens, killed in fake encounters. In instances where bodies have been identified as local, non-militant and militant, it demystifies state rhetoric that rumours these persons to be ‘foreign militants’, propagating misrepresentation that the demand for self-determination is prevailingly external. Mourned, cared for, by locals, as ‘farz’/duty, as part of an obligation,
stated repeatedly, to ‘azadi’. ‘Azadi’/freedom to determine self and future.
On 18 and 20 June, the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (‘Tribunal’, convened in April 2008, International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-Administered Kashmir) visited Baramulla and Kupwara district to conduct ongoing fact-finding and verification related to mass graves at the behest of local communities.
The team comprised of Tribunal Conveners Advocate Parvez Imroz and myself, a staff member, and camera crew.
On 18 June, we visited Raja Mohalla in Uri, Baramulla district, 110 kilometres from Srinagar, where 22 graves were constructed between 1996-1997. Then to Quazipora, where 13 bodies were stated as buried in seven graves in 1991. Then we travelled to Chehal, Bimyar village, Uri, holding 235 graves. We re-met Atta Mohammad, gravedigger and caretaker at Chehal, who testified that these bodies, brought by the police, primarily
after dark, were buried between 2002-2006. Atta Mohammad said that the bodies appear in his nightmares, each in graphic, gruesome detail. Terrorised by the task forced upon him, his nights are bereft of sleep. Then we travelled to Mir Mohalla, Kichama, Sheeri, to the main graveyard with 105 graves, stated to hold about 225-250 bodies, buried between 1994-2003, and a smaller graveyard, with nine graves, adjacent to a sign proclaiming it a ‘Model Village’.
On 20 June, we visited the northern district of Kupwara. On the way we witnessed army convoys, including one of 21+ vehicles. Created in 1979 through the forking of Baramulla district, approximately 5,000 feet above sea level, Kupwara borders the Line-of-Control to the north and west. Between Shamsbari and Pirpanchal mountain ranges, it is one of the most heavily militarised zones, about 95 kilometres from Srinagar. Kupwara houses six army camps, as military and paramilitary forces occupy significant land. Seven interrogation centres have been operational with police stations functioning as additional interrogation cells. In Handwara town, a watchtower surveils and regulates movement.
In Kupwara, we visited Trehgam village, holding 85-100 graves, 24 of which are identified, and spoke with community members. Trehgam was home to Maqbool Bhat (b. 1938), founding figure of the Jammu Kashmir National Liberation Front. Acknowledged as Shaheed-e-Kashmir, Bhat is labelled a ‘terrorist’ by certain segments of India. He sought to unite the territories of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir into a secular, sovereign, democratic state. Bhat was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of India and hanged in Tihar jail in New Delhi on 11 February 1984. Maqbool Bhat’s nephew, Parvaiz Ahmad Bhat, reminded us that Habibullah Bhat, Bhat’s brother, was the first case of enforced disappearance before 1989.
After Trehgam, we reached Regipora around 3 pm and stopped for lunch. There, two persons introduced themselves as Special Branch Kashmir (SBK) and Counter Intelligence Kashmir (CIK) personnel, and questioned the Tribunal staff member about our visit. After responding, we proceeded to the ‘martyrs’ graveyard’ holding 258 graves, constructed in 1995. This burial ground is meticulously ordered, each grave numbered. The body of a 20-25 year old youth was buried in the first week of June, reportedly killed in an encounter in Bamhama village.
We stopped at a roadside tea stall to speak with local people about the graves. Four intelligence personnel questioned us, asking we disclose information about those we had visited. Soon, four additional SBK and CIK personnel joined the questioning. Other intelligence personnel made phone calls. By then, about 12 intelligence personnel gathered. Following further questioning we proceeded toward Srinagar. A car followed at a distance.
We detoured to Sadipora, Kandi, where locals stated that around 20 bodies were buried. The graveyard, overrun with wild flowers, is part of a larger ground used during festivals, including Id. Two of four bodies, killed in a fake encounter on 29 April 2007, were exhumed, identified as locals, contrary to police records stating them to be ‘Pakistani terrorists’. Saidipora holds Riyaz Ahmad Bhat’s grave, killed in the encounter, age 19. Police records, per the First Information Report, declared him a ‘Pakistani terrorist’. Riyaz Bhat was identified by Javeed Ahmed, his brother, as a resident of Kalashpora, Srinagar, based on police photographs from the time of death. Ahmed travelled with the Tribunal to take us to his brother’s grave. On his knees Javeed attempted to clear the thick brush. Later, in Srinagar, he testified that Bhat had never been involved in militancy. Javeed spoke of grieving, of imprisonment and beatings at the police station. He asked how he could have saved his brother from death.
After Sadiapora, we were stopped at Shangargund, Sopore, at about 6.40 pm, by three persons in civilian clothing. They forcibly boarded the car. We were ordered to the Sopore Police Station. There we were asked to detail our identity, employment, the purpose of the visit, and to hand over tapes which, the police alleged, contained ‘dangerous’ and ‘objectionable’ material. We stated that the Tribunal, a public process, was undertaking its work peaceably, lawfully, with informed consent, and that we had not visited restricted areas. We stated that the police had no lawful reason to seize the tapes. We were detained for 16 minutes.
After several calls to senior police persons, we were released. A red Indica car followed us to Sangrama. At Srinagar, Intelligence personnel were stationed at my hotel. On 21 June, I was followed from the hotel to the Tribunal’s office in Lal Chowk, where about 8 personnel were stationed the entire day questioning anyone who entered or left the office.
My mother, residing in Calcutta, received a query regarding my whereabouts from the District Magistrate’s Office. I was followed to the Srinagar airport on 22 June, and questioned, asked if I possessed dual citizenship. I do not. I am a citizen of India and a permanent resident of the United States. On 24 June, I arrived in Bhubaneswar to submit a statement to the Commission of Inquiry on the Kandhamal violence against Christians in 2007 in Orissa. There too, Central Intelligence officials persistently inquired after me. In April, after announcing the Tribunal, I was stopped and harassed at Immigration while leaving India for the United States, and again on my re-entry in June.


The targeting of the Tribunal has not abated since the Amarnath issue erupted around 23 June. The volatile proposal to transfer 800 kanals of land to the Shrine Board, revoked on 01 July, was supported by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu militant Shiv Sena. Despite the Sena’s recent call to Hindus to form suicide squads, it faces no sanctions from the state. Kashmiris of diverse ethnicities and religions dissented the Amarnath land transfer. Community leaders in Kashmir explained that their stance against the proposal is not in dissent to Hindu pilgrims, but a repressive state. During the Amarnath land transfer protests, civil disobedience paralleled that of 1989, amid severe repression. On 30 June, in curfew-like conditions, we met with two families in Srinagar who narrated that the police had shot dead their sons. At one place, in the old city, while the men took the body for burial late at night, the police returned and destroyed property and molested women.
On 30 June, at about 10:10 pm, Parvez Imroz and his family were attacked at home by state forces, who fired three shots and hurled a grenade while exiting when family and community interrupted their attempts. Neighbours reported seeing one large armoured vehicle and two Gypsy cars, and men in CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) and SOG (Special Operations Group) uniforms. This murder attempt is an escalation in the forms of state-led intimidation and targeting aimed at Advocate Imroz. It is an attempt to make the Tribunal vulnerable and instil fear in us in an attempt to stop this process.
On 01 July, we met at Khurram Parvez’s home before addressing a press conference. Outside, jeeps with plainclothes men continued their observation, accompanied by a jeep with armed men in uniform.


Later, Advocate Imroz, Khurram Parvez, Advocate Mihir Desai, and I went to the police station to lodge a First Information Report. We were not permitted to do so. For security reasons, Parvez Imroz is not staying at home. Khurram Parvez remains under surveillance.
I must allow for distance before revisiting the graves. On 04 July, sitting on a plane at Delhi International Airport, waiting to take-off, I received a phone call on my India mobile, caller ‘Unknown’: “Madam,we know you’re leaving. Think wisely before coming back”.
Orders to unnerve the leadership of the International Tribunal by the Government of India’s intelligence and security administration appear to be generated at the highest levels. The general policy of surveillance should not be used as a pretext to create obstacles for our work. As India argues for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, the Government of India, as ‘Frontline Defenders’ stated in their recent alert supporting the Tribunal, must adhere to its own repeated commitment to peace in Kashmir and international conventions and laws. It must uphold democratic governance and safeguard human rights.
Advocate Imroz, Khurram Parvez, other members of the Tribunal team, have long experienced injustices for their extraordinary work as human rights defenders. A lauded human rights lawyer, Parvez Imroz has survived two, now three, assassination attempts, the first from militants. Since 2005, his passport has been denied. Khurram Parvez lost his leg in a landmine incident. Gautam Navlakha and Zahir-ud-Din have been intimidated and threatened, as has Mihir Desai, in their larger work. It is noteworthy that the Government of India is adding intimidation to the death and rape threats delivered me by Hindu extremists for human rights work.
The work of the Tribunal is an act of conscience and accountability, fraught with the charge of complex and violent histories. Its mandate, in documenting Kashmir’s present, is to chronicle the fabric of militarisation, status of human rights, and legal, political, militaristic ‘states of exception’. The Tribunal’s work will continue through the coming months. We have received extensive solidarity from civil society; victims/survivors, at street corners, from villagers, ordinary citizens, those committed to justice. Each life in Kashmir has a story to tell. The subjugation of civil society has produced magnificent ethical resistance. The state cannot combat every individual.
Nearly two decades of genocidal violence record 70,000+ dead, 8,000+ disappeared, 60,000+ tortured, 50,000+ orphaned,incalculable sexualised and gendered violence, a very high rate of people with suicidal behaviours; hundreds of thousands displaced; violations of promises, laws, conventions, agreements, treaties; mass graves; mile upon mile of barbed wire; fear, suppression of varied demands for participation to determine Kashmir’s future, spirals of violence, protracted silence. Last year, Kashmir’s only hospital with services for mental health received 68,000 patients. Profound social, economic, and psychological consequences,and an intense isolation have impacted private, public, and everyday life. It has generated brutal resistance on the part of groups that have engaged in violent militancy. Repressions of struggles for self-determination and international
policies/politics have yielded severe consequences, creating a juncture at which the failure of governance intersects with a culture of grief.
Torture survivors, non-militants and former militants, that I met with testified to the sadism of the forces. Reportedly, a man, hung upside down, had petrol injected through his anus. Water-boarding,mutilation, rape of women, children, and men, starvation, psychological torture.
Brutalised, ‘healed’, to be brutalised again. An eagle tattoo on the arm of a man was reportedly identified by an army officer as a symbol of Pakistan-held Azad Kashmir, even as the man clarified the tattoo was from his childhood. The skin containing it was burned. The officer, the man stated, said: “When you look at this, think of azadi”. A mother, reportedly asked to watch her daughter’s rape by army personnel, pleaded for her release. They refused. She pleaded that she could not watch, asking to be sent out of the room or be killed. We were told that the soldier pointed a gun to her forehead, stating he would grant her wish, and shot her before they proceeded to rape the daughter. We also spoke with persons violated by militants. One man stated that people’s experiences with the reprehensible atrocities of militancy do not imply the abdication of their desire for self-determination. This, he stated, is a mistake the state makes, conflating militancy with the intent for self-determination.
He clarified that neither is self-determination an indication of allegiance to Pakistan, largely to the contrary.
The continuing and daunting presence of military and paramilitary forces, increased and sophisticated surveillance, merges with pervasive and immense suffering and anger of people in villages, towns, and cities across Kashmir. Parallel to the presence of 500,000 troops and commitment to nuclearisation, official figures state that there are about 450 militants in Kashmir and that demilitarisation is underway. In March 2007, three government committees on demilitarisation resolved that the ‘low intensity war continues’, placing in limbo troop reduction and the repealment of draconian laws -- the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958, imposed in Jammu and Kashmir in December 1990, and the Disturbed Areas Act, 1976, enacted in 1992. Local realities reflect that these laws and the military seek to control the general population with impunity.
Kashmir is increasingly defined as a ‘post-conflict’ zone. ‘Post-conflict’ is not the propagation of tourism toward an overt display of nationalism. Post-conflict is a space in which to heal, reflect, and enable civil society participation in determining peace and justice. The graves speak to those that listen. Those haunted by history are called to remember.

(Dr Angana Chatterji is associate professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies and co-convener of the International People’s Tribunal in Kashmir. A shorter version of the article appeared in Tehelka magazine’s recent issue).[/B]

The Daily Etalaat Srinagar - Disquiet Ghosts: Mass graves in Kashmir

The Daily Etalaat Srinagar - Disquiet Ghosts: Mass graves in Kashmir

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

So long as the insurgents target combatants and government infrastructure and officials (representing the occupying authority - occupied since Kashmir is internationally recognized as disputed), and do not deliberately target civilians, I do not see how they can be called terrorists.

In the recent incidents the clashes were between security forces and militants - combatants on both sides - so both sides would be correct to call their dead 'martyrs' I suppose.

 

[gogbot]

Disquiet Ghosts: Mass graves in Kashmir
Dr. Angana Chatterji
09 July, 2008


Dirt, rubble, thick grass, hillside and flatland, crowded with graves. Signifiers of military and paramilitary terror, masked from the world. Constructed by institutions of state to conceal massacre. Placed next to homes, fields, schools, an army practise range. Unknown, unmarked. Over 940 graves in a segment of Baramulla district alone. Some containing more than one cadaver. Dug by locals, coerced by the police, on village land. Bodies dragged through the night, some tortured, burnt, desecrated. Circulating mythology claims these graves uniformly house ‘foreign militants’. Exhumation and identification have not occurred in most cases. When undertaken, in sizable instances, records prove the dead to be local people, ordinary citizens, killed in fake encounters. In instances where bodies have been identified as local, non-militant and militant, it demystifies state rhetoric that rumours these persons to be ‘foreign militants’, propagating misrepresentation that the demand for self-determination is prevailingly external. Mourned, cared for, by locals, as ‘farz’/duty, as part of an obligation,
stated repeatedly, to ‘azadi’. ‘Azadi’/freedom to determine self and future.
On 18 and 20 June, the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (‘Tribunal’, convened in April 2008, International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-Administered Kashmir) visited Baramulla and Kupwara district to conduct ongoing fact-finding and verification related to mass graves at the behest of local communities.
The team comprised of Tribunal Conveners Advocate Parvez Imroz and myself, a staff member, and camera crew.
On 18 June, we visited Raja Mohalla in Uri, Baramulla district, 110 kilometres from Srinagar, where 22 graves were constructed between 1996-1997. Then to Quazipora, where 13 bodies were stated as buried in seven graves in 1991. Then we travelled to Chehal, Bimyar village, Uri, holding 235 graves. We re-met Atta Mohammad, gravedigger and caretaker at Chehal, who testified that these bodies, brought by the police, primarily
after dark, were buried between 2002-2006. Atta Mohammad said that the bodies appear in his nightmares, each in graphic, gruesome detail. Terrorised by the task forced upon him, his nights are bereft of sleep. Then we travelled to Mir Mohalla, Kichama, Sheeri, to the main graveyard with 105 graves, stated to hold about 225-250 bodies, buried between 1994-2003, and a smaller graveyard, with nine graves, adjacent to a sign proclaiming it a ‘Model Village’.
On 20 June, we visited the northern district of Kupwara. On the way we witnessed army convoys, including one of 21+ vehicles. Created in 1979 through the forking of Baramulla district, approximately 5,000 feet above sea level, Kupwara borders the Line-of-Control to the north and west. Between Shamsbari and Pirpanchal mountain ranges, it is one of the most heavily militarised zones, about 95 kilometres from Srinagar. Kupwara houses six army camps, as military and paramilitary forces occupy significant land. Seven interrogation centres have been operational with police stations functioning as additional interrogation cells. In Handwara town, a watchtower surveils and regulates movement.
In Kupwara, we visited Trehgam village, holding 85-100 graves, 24 of which are identified, and spoke with community members. Trehgam was home to Maqbool Bhat (b. 1938), founding figure of the Jammu Kashmir National Liberation Front. Acknowledged as Shaheed-e-Kashmir, Bhat is labelled a ‘terrorist’ by certain segments of India. He sought to unite the territories of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir into a secular, sovereign, democratic state. Bhat was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of India and hanged in Tihar jail in New Delhi on 11 February 1984. Maqbool Bhat’s nephew, Parvaiz Ahmad Bhat, reminded us that Habibullah Bhat, Bhat’s brother, was the first case of enforced disappearance before 1989.
After Trehgam, we reached Regipora around 3 pm and stopped for lunch. There, two persons introduced themselves as Special Branch Kashmir (SBK) and Counter Intelligence Kashmir (CIK) personnel, and questioned the Tribunal staff member about our visit. After responding, we proceeded to the ‘martyrs’ graveyard’ holding 258 graves, constructed in 1995. This burial ground is meticulously ordered, each grave numbered. The body of a 20-25 year old youth was buried in the first week of June, reportedly killed in an encounter in Bamhama village.
We stopped at a roadside tea stall to speak with local people about the graves. Four intelligence personnel questioned us, asking we disclose information about those we had visited. Soon, four additional SBK and CIK personnel joined the questioning. Other intelligence personnel made phone calls. By then, about 12 intelligence personnel gathered. Following further questioning we proceeded toward Srinagar. A car followed at a distance.
We detoured to Sadipora, Kandi, where locals stated that around 20 bodies were buried. The graveyard, overrun with wild flowers, is part of a larger ground used during festivals, including Id. Two of four bodies, killed in a fake encounter on 29 April 2007, were exhumed, identified as locals, contrary to police records stating them to be ‘Pakistani terrorists’. Saidipora holds Riyaz Ahmad Bhat’s grave, killed in the encounter, age 19. Police records, per the First Information Report, declared him a ‘Pakistani terrorist’. Riyaz Bhat was identified by Javeed Ahmed, his brother, as a resident of Kalashpora, Srinagar, based on police photographs from the time of death. Ahmed travelled with the Tribunal to take us to his brother’s grave. On his knees Javeed attempted to clear the thick brush. Later, in Srinagar, he testified that Bhat had never been involved in militancy. Javeed spoke of grieving, of imprisonment and beatings at the police station. He asked how he could have saved his brother from death.
After Sadiapora, we were stopped at Shangargund, Sopore, at about 6.40 pm, by three persons in civilian clothing. They forcibly boarded the car. We were ordered to the Sopore Police Station. There we were asked to detail our identity, employment, the purpose of the visit, and to hand over tapes which, the police alleged, contained ‘dangerous’ and ‘objectionable’ material. We stated that the Tribunal, a public process, was undertaking its work peaceably, lawfully, with informed consent, and that we had not visited restricted areas. We stated that the police had no lawful reason to seize the tapes. We were detained for 16 minutes.
After several calls to senior police persons, we were released. A red Indica car followed us to Sangrama. At Srinagar, Intelligence personnel were stationed at my hotel. On 21 June, I was followed from the hotel to the Tribunal’s office in Lal Chowk, where about 8 personnel were stationed the entire day questioning anyone who entered or left the office.
My mother, residing in Calcutta, received a query regarding my whereabouts from the District Magistrate’s Office. I was followed to the Srinagar airport on 22 June, and questioned, asked if I possessed dual citizenship. I do not. I am a citizen of India and a permanent resident of the United States. On 24 June, I arrived in Bhubaneswar to submit a statement to the Commission of Inquiry on the Kandhamal violence against Christians in 2007 in Orissa. There too, Central Intelligence officials persistently inquired after me. In April, after announcing the Tribunal, I was stopped and harassed at Immigration while leaving India for the United States, and again on my re-entry in June.


The targeting of the Tribunal has not abated since the Amarnath issue erupted around 23 June. The volatile proposal to transfer 800 kanals of land to the Shrine Board, revoked on 01 July, was supported by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu militant Shiv Sena. Despite the Sena’s recent call to Hindus to form suicide squads, it faces no sanctions from the state. Kashmiris of diverse ethnicities and religions dissented the Amarnath land transfer. Community leaders in Kashmir explained that their stance against the proposal is not in dissent to Hindu pilgrims, but a repressive state. During the Amarnath land transfer protests, civil disobedience paralleled that of 1989, amid severe repression. On 30 June, in curfew-like conditions, we met with two families in Srinagar who narrated that the police had shot dead their sons. At one place, in the old city, while the men took the body for burial late at night, the police returned and destroyed property and molested women.
On 30 June, at about 10:10 pm, Parvez Imroz and his family were attacked at home by state forces, who fired three shots and hurled a grenade while exiting when family and community interrupted their attempts. Neighbours reported seeing one large armoured vehicle and two Gypsy cars, and men in CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) and SOG (Special Operations Group) uniforms. This murder attempt is an escalation in the forms of state-led intimidation and targeting aimed at Advocate Imroz. It is an attempt to make the Tribunal vulnerable and instil fear in us in an attempt to stop this process.
On 01 July, we met at Khurram Parvez’s home before addressing a press conference. Outside, jeeps with plainclothes men continued their observation, accompanied by a jeep with armed men in uniform.


Later, Advocate Imroz, Khurram Parvez, Advocate Mihir Desai, and I went to the police station to lodge a First Information Report. We were not permitted to do so. For security reasons, Parvez Imroz is not staying at home. Khurram Parvez remains under surveillance.
I must allow for distance before revisiting the graves. On 04 July, sitting on a plane at Delhi International Airport, waiting to take-off, I received a phone call on my India mobile, caller ‘Unknown’: “Madam,we know you’re leaving. Think wisely before coming back”.
Orders to unnerve the leadership of the International Tribunal by the Government of India’s intelligence and security administration appear to be generated at the highest levels. The general policy of surveillance should not be used as a pretext to create obstacles for our work. As India argues for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, the Government of India, as ‘Frontline Defenders’ stated in their recent alert supporting the Tribunal, must adhere to its own repeated commitment to peace in Kashmir and international conventions and laws. It must uphold democratic governance and safeguard human rights.
Advocate Imroz, Khurram Parvez, other members of the Tribunal team, have long experienced injustices for their extraordinary work as human rights defenders. A lauded human rights lawyer, Parvez Imroz has survived two, now three, assassination attempts, the first from militants. Since 2005, his passport has been denied. Khurram Parvez lost his leg in a landmine incident. Gautam Navlakha and Zahir-ud-Din have been intimidated and threatened, as has Mihir Desai, in their larger work. It is noteworthy that the Government of India is adding intimidation to the death and rape threats delivered me by Hindu extremists for human rights work.
The work of the Tribunal is an act of conscience and accountability, fraught with the charge of complex and violent histories. Its mandate, in documenting Kashmir’s present, is to chronicle the fabric of militarisation, status of human rights, and legal, political, militaristic ‘states of exception’. The Tribunal’s work will continue through the coming months. We have received extensive solidarity from civil society; victims/survivors, at street corners, from villagers, ordinary citizens, those committed to justice. Each life in Kashmir has a story to tell. The subjugation of civil society has produced magnificent ethical resistance. The state cannot combat every individual.
Nearly two decades of genocidal violence record 70,000+ dead, 8,000+ disappeared, 60,000+ tortured, 50,000+ orphaned,incalculable sexualised and gendered violence, a very high rate of people with suicidal behaviours; hundreds of thousands displaced; violations of promises, laws, conventions, agreements, treaties; mass graves; mile upon mile of barbed wire; fear, suppression of varied demands for participation to determine Kashmir’s future, spirals of violence, protracted silence. Last year, Kashmir’s only hospital with services for mental health received 68,000 patients. Profound social, economic, and psychological consequences,and an intense isolation have impacted private, public, and everyday life. It has generated brutal resistance on the part of groups that have engaged in violent militancy. Repressions of struggles for self-determination and international
policies/politics have yielded severe consequences, creating a juncture at which the failure of governance intersects with a culture of grief.
Torture survivors, non-militants and former militants, that I met with testified to the sadism of the forces. Reportedly, a man, hung upside down, had petrol injected through his anus. Water-boarding,mutilation, rape of women, children, and men, starvation, psychological torture.
Brutalised, ‘healed’, to be brutalised again. An eagle tattoo on the arm of a man was reportedly identified by an army officer as a symbol of Pakistan-held Azad Kashmir, even as the man clarified the tattoo was from his childhood. The skin containing it was burned. The officer, the man stated, said: “When you look at this, think of azadi”. A mother, reportedly asked to watch her daughter’s rape by army personnel, pleaded for her release. They refused. She pleaded that she could not watch, asking to be sent out of the room or be killed. We were told that the soldier pointed a gun to her forehead, stating he would grant her wish, and shot her before they proceeded to rape the daughter. We also spoke with persons violated by militants. One man stated that people’s experiences with the reprehensible atrocities of militancy do not imply the abdication of their desire for self-determination. This, he stated, is a mistake the state makes, conflating militancy with the intent for self-determination.
He clarified that neither is self-determination an indication of allegiance to Pakistan, largely to the contrary.
The continuing and daunting presence of military and paramilitary forces, increased and sophisticated surveillance, merges with pervasive and immense suffering and anger of people in villages, towns, and cities across Kashmir. Parallel to the presence of 500,000 troops and commitment to nuclearisation, official figures state that there are about 450 militants in Kashmir and that demilitarisation is underway. In March 2007, three government committees on demilitarisation resolved that the ‘low intensity war continues’, placing in limbo troop reduction and the repealment of draconian laws -- the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958, imposed in Jammu and Kashmir in December 1990, and the Disturbed Areas Act, 1976, enacted in 1992. Local realities reflect that these laws and the military seek to control the general population with impunity.
Kashmir is increasingly defined as a ‘post-conflict’ zone. ‘Post-conflict’ is not the propagation of tourism toward an overt display of nationalism. Post-conflict is a space in which to heal, reflect, and enable civil society participation in determining peace and justice. The graves speak to those that listen. Those haunted by history are called to remember.

(Dr Angana Chatterji is associate professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies and co-convener of the International People’s Tribunal in Kashmir. A shorter version of the article appeared in Tehelka magazine’s recent issue).[/B]

The Daily Etalaat Srinagar - Disquiet Ghosts: Mass graves in Kashmir

The Daily Etalaat Srinagar - Disquiet Ghosts: Mass graves in Kashmir

Is that it ,JANA an unknown article from an unknown web site.
If India really was an evil occupation force it could do a lot worse that anything you describe.

In reality, What happens in Kashmir is very different.

No doubt The IA had some faults in its ability to maintain law and order.
But An army was never meant to be a police force. a role that it must forcibly follow with army doctrine. Thus you see police brutality but in reality its not the police but the army. Thus army follows army doctrine.

The terrorist incursions further complicate situations on the Indian side.

And what about your occupied Kashmir, no one ever hears anything from there?

 

[jehangirhaider]

Mr Shri Ram what you want to prove, all people are talking about Kashmir, why you are showing youtube video about BLA, it is our internal problem flamed by Indians and it is not disputed area,it is not in UN, so please shut your nonsense post. what if i here put other freedom movements inside India like nagaland,manipura so many even dnt remember the name, but there is no point to discuss those here because all others are internal to India.

So please stop this nonsense.... and you can not deny Kashmir disputed issue till it is solved either by force or by table talks.

BTW who ever started this topic about Indian Major, this is also nonsense thread. Now this "defence.pk forum will used to show the identity,bravery and family background of every killed person of Indian army inside occupied Kashmir.

 

[gogbot]

So long as the insurgents target combatants and government infrastructure and officials (representing the occupying authority - occupied since Kashmir is internationally recognized as disputed), and do not deliberately target civilians, I do not see how they can be called terrorists.

In the recent incidents the clashes were between security forces and militants - combatants on both sides - so both sides would be correct to call their dead 'martyrs' I suppose.

What about the bombs these groups plant that result in the deaths of civilians.