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PESHAWAR, Oct 27 (APP):Every year, October 27 is observed the world over as ‘Black Day,’ as 77 years ago, on this day, India, without any legal justification, forcibly took control of the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
The gruesome violations of human rights, including the forced disappearance of over 8,000 innocent Kashmiris, 8,652 unmarked mass graves, and the imposition of the longest curfew on some 10 million unarmed Kashmiris, have exposed India’s ugly secular face before the world.
According to September 2021’s Pakistani dossier, about 8,652 unmarked graves were identified in 89 villages of six districts in the held valley, while bodies of 37 Kashmiris burned alive by Indian forces were beyond recognition.
Around 162,000 cases of arbitrary arrests and torture, over 25,000 pellet gun injuries, 11,250 women raped, 23,000 women widowed, and over 108,000 children orphaned since 1989 in IIOJK.
The state terrorism and human rights abuses further intensified in IIOJK after the fascist Modi government revoked its special status on August 5, 2019, forcing most Kashmiris to spend sleepless nights due to indiscriminate firing, cluster ammunition, sniper attacks, excessive use of pellet guns, and fake encounters.
Mushtaq Ahmed Shah, Vice Chairman, Jummu and Kashmir Peoples League, said that frustration at India’s intransigence and the world’s hesitation to fulfill its commitment drove the people of Kashmir to be more assertive in their struggle.
“In the past 35 years of struggle, since 1990 alone, Kashmiris’ have suffered loss of more than 100,000 civilians—men, women, and children—and have borne the perpetration of countless atrocities by more than 900,000 Indian military and paramilitary forces concentrated in Kashmir as an army of occupation,” he said.
He regretted that the popular revolt in Eastern European countries was observed and reported by international media, but the Kashmir issue remained largely hidden from the world’s view.
“This is the reason that the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has cited that news media in Kashmir is on the brink of extinction,” he said.
Amnesty International, in its letter co-signed by six organizations, had recently urged the representatives of G20 member countries for the release of jailed human rights defenders and political prisoners.
These organizations included the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances, the Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, Front Line Defenders, and Kashmir Law and Justice Project.
The organizations urged the G-20 countries to raise these issues directly and forthrightly with the government of India in accordance with their obligations under international law and call on India to adhere to its international legal obligations.
“The voices in this letter resonate with a global call for justice, accountability, and the protection of human dignity in one of the world’s most contested territories,” the letter stated.
The Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) has also repeatedly supported Kashmiri people’s struggle and called upon India to give Kashmiris their just right to self-determination.
“The 43-page report of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) 2019 had exposed Indian security forces’ systematic terrorism and war crimes at IIOJK,” said Professor Dr. A.H. Hilali, former Chairman of the Political Science Department at the University of Peshawar.
The report had testified that Indian occupied forces had used excessive force and pellet guns against peaceful Kashmiris in 2016, resulting in deaths and injuries of a large number of civilians, which was a clear violation of ‘UN Basic Principles on Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials’, he said.
“Great Hurriyat leader Muhammad Yasin Malik was jailed for life in a fake case in a bid to silence his strong voice for Kashmir’s freedom.”
The brutal killing of freedom fighter Burhan Wani and other Kashmiri leadership in a fake encounter, besides issuance of over six million illegal domicile certificates of IIOJK to Hindus, had exposed the anti-Kashmir’s policies of the Hinduvata’s regime, he concluded.
Dr. Hilali said the illegal occupation of Kashmir Valley by India had contravened multiple articles of the 30 fundamental human rights of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) drafted by representatives from all the regions of the world, including India, on December 10, 1948, and subsequently adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA).
He said this declaration was applied to all the signatory members of the UN, including India, and restrained them from all kinds of abuses, exploitation, maltreatment, and violence protected in the UDHR.