This is a report by Human Rights Watch which reports that India’s abuses in Kashmir rose even though international pressure from trade and security partners on India eased. It documents dozens of cases of extrajudicial executions committed by Indian paramilitary and military forces between December 1993 and June 1994. It found that Indian troops continue to summarily execute detainees, kill civilians in reprisal attacks and burn down neighborhoods and villages as collective punishment for those suspected of supporting the militants.Torture also continues to be routine. Human rights groups have compiled a list of over fifty interrogation centers where detainees are kept in unacknowledged detention and tortured. The security forces routinely defy court orders to produce the detainees, and several thousand habeas corpus petitions filed in these cases remain pending without result, according to the Jammu and Kashmir Bar Association. All of these actions are in clear violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which India is a party. Although the government claims to have punished security personnel for abuses, to Human Rights Watch/Asia’s knowledge not a single soldier has been prosecuted for the murder or torture of a detainee.
Topics: disappearances, extrajudicial executions in Bandipora and Mawar, arson in Mawar, torture, failure to prosecute, U.S. policy, conclusions and recommendations
Terms: extrajudicial killings in Bandipora, extrajudicial killings in Mawar, arson in Mawar, custodial killings, reprisal killings, custodial torture, excessive use of force, state impunity, violation of habeas corpus
In 1993, in response to international publicity about human rights abuses in Kashmir, the government of India launched a campaign to counter the criticism. Despite the fact that the government had done little to end the abuses, India’s donors and trading partners backed off from public censure. The Clinton administration, in particular, abandoned what had been a refreshing new candor about India’s Kashmir policy, apparently in the hope of promoting better trade and security agreements with India. But human rights conditions in Kashmir have continued to deteriorate, and despite India’s promises of elections and the establishment of new political leadership in Kashmir, the conflict there shows no signs of abating. Civilians continue to bear the brunt of the casualties, falling victim both to government forces and to the various factions, collectively known as "militants," fighting for a change in the political status of Kashmir.
August 1994
Originally published
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