Pakistan urges UN probe into Kashmir labourers killing

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Tuesday called for an independent inquiry under international scrutiny into the extra-judicial killing of three innocent Kashmiri labourers in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).

“Pakistan reiterates its calls upon the international community to hold India accountable for its crimes against the Kashmiri people and work for resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people,” the Foreign Office said in a statement.

The three Kashmiri labourers were killed by the Indian occupation forces in staged encounter in July in Shopian, where they had gone to work at an apple orchard.

“The revelations that weapons were planted on the bodies of the Kashmiri labourers martyred in Kashmir to make it look as though they were armed fighters in a staged gun battle are only a tip of the ice-berg of Indian crimes against the Kashmiri people,” said the Foreign Office statement.

It said more than 300 innocent Kashmiris, including women and children, had been killed in “fake encounters” and “staged cordon and search” operations during the last one year.

“Pakistan has been consistently drawing the international community’s attention towards extra-judicial killing of innocent Kashmiris by the Indian occupation forces to further perpetuate India’s illegal occupation of Kashmir,” it said.

“Similar findings of extra-judicial killings have been reported by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in its two Kashmir reports of 2018 and 2019,” it added.

It said the horrific act of extra-judicial killing of Kashmiri labourers as well as other such acts over the past three decades warranted an investigation by a UN Commission of Inquiry, as recommended by the OHCHR, to expose the brutalities of Indian security forces in IIOJK.

“Nothing short of an inquiry under international scrutiny will either meet the requirements of justice or accepted by the Kashmiri people,” it said, adding: “No cover-up exercises can anymore hide India’s crimes and save it from international censure.”