Srinagar massacre: Pakistan urges world to hold India accountable

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday urged the international community to hold India accountable for its grave human rights violations in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), saying the situation “warranted investigations under international scrutiny”.

In a statement, the Foreign Office said India continued to brutalise the defenceless Kashmiris in the IIOJK through extra-judicial killings in fake “encounters” and staged “cordon-and-search” operations, custodial torture and imposition of collective punishment.

“These atrocities cannot break the will of the Kashmiri people in their just struggle for the inalienable right to self-determination as enshrined in the relevant United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions,” it added.

The statement was issued in connection with June 11, 1991 Chotta Bazaar massacre in Srinagar, where the Indian occupation forces had opened indiscriminate fire and killed 32 innocent Kashmiris, including women and children.

“Despite repeated demands of judicial inquiry, the victims and their families are still awaiting justice,” the Foreign Office stressed.

It mentioned that the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in its reports of 2018 and 2019 had recommended the establishment of Commission of Inquiry (COI) to investigate gross and systematic human rights violations in IIOJK.

According to a report released by the Kashmir Media Service, on this day in 1991, the Indian paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force troops after an alleged clash with unknown attackers at Zainakadal went berserk and opened indiscriminate fire with their automatic weapons all the way from their camp at Syed Mansoor to the densely populated downtown area of Srinagar, Chotta Bazaar.

With blood in their eyes, the troops barged into the shops, gathered people outside the streets and killed them randomly.

The indiscriminate firing by the forces’ personnel took a massive toll of 32 lives of innocent civilians and left more than 22 people critically injured — including bullet-hit shopkeepers, passersby, a 75-year old woman and a 10-year-old child.

It pointed out that the blood curdling incident still causes a deep stir inside the hearts of the scores of bereaved families whose kith and kin were massacred.

Even Amnesty International then expressed its serious concern on the horrific incident and demanded a judicial inquiry into the matter, the report said.