Disclaimer: This report (by a UN rapporteur) repeats and amplifies Indian state propaganda on Kashmir.  It uses terminology and analysis deployed by Indian disinformation efforts which are inconsistent with factual reality and, among other things, serve to obscure actual violations and promote impunity for those violations.

In Kashmir and Jammu, Muslim extremists are said to be continuing their persecution of the Hindu minority. They are said to have attacked Hindu pilgrims near Anantnag on 3 August 1993, killing one person and injuring 23 others. On 14 August, the extremists allegedly stopped a bus and killed 16 Hindu civilians. They are also said to have killed a Hindu leader. On 15 September, they planted a bomb in a Hindu temple, killing one person and injuring eight others...According to the information received, most of the Muslims in Kashmir are caught between the violent actions of the Muslim extremists and those of the security forces taken against any insurrection and even against civilians.

Similarly Jammu and Kashmir, a symbol of India’s secular democracy, has been a target of externally sponsored religion-based terrorism for the last five years. The aim is to divide people on the basis of sectarian affiliation and undermine the secular fabric and territorial integrity of India. Jammu and Kashmir is home to Muslims of various hues, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Christians, who have traditionally lived in harmony. What in fact has happened is the deliberate targeting of Kashmir Hindus by fundamentalists, terrorist groups and foreign mercenaries. The persecution by Muslim extremists of the Hindu minority and the systematic religion-based extremism of terrorist elements has resulted in the exodus of 250,000 members of the Hindu and other minorities from the Kashmir Valley to other parts of India. Fundamentalists and terrorists have also targeted and assassinated Muslim intellectuals and liberal Muslim leaders in Jammu and Kashmir. As a consequence, as many as 50,000 Muslims have also been compelled to flee the Valley to seek safety in other parts of India.

The common man in Kashmir, both Muslim and Hindu, today yearns for the restoration of his liberal ethos and historical and cultural heritage. The people of the State have begun to see through the design of the extremists, terrorists and their foreign masters. This had led to an escalation by the latter, infiltrating armed foreign mercenaries into the State to whip up religious hysteria and maintain the cycle of violence. A concrete manifestation was the deliberate campaign of forcible occupation and desecration of places of worship of both communities, attacks on Hindu pilgrims, thwarting of holy pilgrimages, assassination of political and religious leaders. As recently as June 1994, the Mirwaiz (a Muslim religious leader) of South Kashmir was kidnapped and murdered by an externally sponsored fundamentalist terrorist group and Hizbul Mujahiddin. The populace protested at the murder in huge demonstrations against extremists, terrorists and their foreign sponsors.