This statement (one of many over many years submitted to the UN Commission of Human Rights by International Economic Development, Inc. and the Humanitarian Law Project (a U.S. NGO working to protect human rights and promote the peaceful resolution of conflict by using established international human rights laws and humanitarian law)) reprised violations of international law in Indian-Admnistered Jammu and Kashmir and accountability efforts at the UN while decrying the UN's failure to act on its commitments to the people of Kashmir. It also urged the UN to fulfill pertinent UN Security Council resolutions and assess and address "the overwhelming numbers of humanitarian and human rights violations that have accumulated" in IAJK.
Topics: human rights in Kashmir
Terms: violations of human rights law, violations of humanitarian law, armed conflict, violations of Geneva Conventions, UN Security Council resolutions, failure to implement plebiscite, March 1996 killing of Jalil Andrabi, Rashtriya Rifles, Indian state propaganda, religious discrimination, racism, victim-blaming, failure of international accountability, failure of international community, international impunity, colonialism, occupation, denial of right to self-determination, denial of justice, right to self-determination, violation of international law, custodial killings, custodial torture, UN Security Council resolutions
In the eleven years since our first statement the situation in Jammu and Kashmir has deteriorated markedly.While the number of Indian military troops varies (ranging from 400,000 to 800,000 persons), the area is essentially under a continual state of siege. (2) Grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions occur with alarming frequency: assassination of political leadership, disappearances, murder and torture of POWs, torture (including rapes) and custodial deaths of civilians, military attacks on the civilian population, attacks on hospitals and medical aid providers, restriction on medical aid and the like. Refugees continue to flee. The United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding the plebiscite remain unimplemented.
The international community is well aware of both the failure to implement the plebiscite as ordered by the Security Council over 50 years ago and the massive and continuous violations of the Geneva Conventions and human rights norms throughout the past eleven years. International Educational Development alone has raised both issues more than twenty-five times since 1990 at sessions of both the Sub-Commission and the Commission. We have sent investigators and circulated reports on Kashmir, beginning at the 1993 Vienna Conference and updated annually at the three sessions of the Commission and Sub-Commission immediately following the Vienna Conference.
Our organization has pondered this silence, especially because the government of India constantly raises the issue of "Islamic terrorism" -- which is repeated many times by the western media. We have condemned this racially/religiously-biased use of terms on many occasions. In this light we must state again that the focus of the international community should be on the disposition of Kashmir in conformity with the realization of the right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people -- not the religion of some (actually most) Kashmiris. The vast majority of Kashmiri people want the plebiscite not because they are Islamic but because they are
Kashmiris who were promised this plebiscite by the United Nations Security Council. They view, and we concur, that their "incorporation" into India is an illegal vestige of colonialism and that therefore they suffer alien occupation. And most importantly, the use of force by Kashmiri military forces cannot be characterized as terrorism but must be viewed as fully covered by both treaty-based and customary humanitarian law.
July 2001
Originally published
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