Promotion, protection of HR stressed

Rawalpindi 

Jammu and Kashmir Council for Human Rights (JKCHR) Secretary General Dr. Syed Nazir Gilani has tried to shake the collective conscience of the United Nations by portraying the true picture of the past 26 years in Indian occupied Kashmir, where Indian paramilitary forces have committed excesses with impunity under draconian laws. 

Dr Gilani, who is currently visiting Pakistan, portrayed this reality in two documents, which have been sent by the London-based Jammu and Kashmir Council for Human Rights (JKCHR) to the Secretary General of the United Nations, says a press release issued here on Friday. The JKCHR is in Special Consultative Status with the UN on the deteriorating Human Rights situation in Indian held Kashmir. 

In the two documents, JKCHR Secretary General has highlighted, “UN Human Rights Council and Human Rights Commission have been listening to the voices of the people of Jammu and Kashmir in regard to human rights situation in the Indian occupied Kashmir. It is time that the Human Rights Council takes positive steps to monitor the “Promotion and protection of all human rights, civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development in the disputed Jammu and Kashmir.” 

The two documents submitted under agenda items 3 and 4 of the 31st session of UN Human Rights Council will be released under Resolution 1996/31 as UN General Assembly documents at the Human Rights Council session which begins on February 29 in Geneva. 

The two JKCHR documents likely to be released by the UN on Monday continue to state that “Police have constituted special cells for monitoring social mediate site. Currently over 100 online groups are under scanner. Youths, mostly minors (juveniles) have been arrested on charges of stone throwing by the police. Police have made a regular feature of their daily discipline to continue a massive search-and-arrest operation in various parts of the Kashmir, Valley.”

 Dr. Syed Nazir Gilani said: “In the past 26 years excesses have been committed with impunity under Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). A complete generation of Kashmiri Muslim youth has been killed. International Human Rights body Amnesty International (AI) in its latest Kashmir report has strongly demanded the revocation of AFSPA keeping in view the rights violations being committed under its cover. It is a disturbing situation that Indian authorities are not only targeting the Kashmiri Muslim youth in various institutions or businesses in India but the Kashmiri Muslim youth remains a target population in the Valley. A generation has been killed in the last twenty six years, there is an army of disabled youth, they are unemployed, indexed for security clearance and the majority is nervous and stressed. Conscientious Indians like former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court Rajindar Sachar and the "Father of the Civil Liberties movement" in India Justice Vithal Mahadeo Tarkunde of Bombay High Court have advocated in their reports the cause of human rights situation in Kashmir.”