UK parliament's damning report accuses India of mass murder of Kashmiris

LONDON: The All-Party Parliamentary Kashmir Group (APPKG) of the British Parliament has condemned India for using excessive force in Kashmir and refusing to allow independent observers from the UK to enter into the Indian-occupied Kashmir (IoK) to monitor the true scale of human rights abuses.

Chris Leslie, a member of the British Parliament associated with the Labour Party and the APPKG chairperson, unveiled a report Tuesday evening, alongside dozens of Labour and Conservative MPs as well as Azad Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan.

The APPKG comprises over 70 parliamentarians from the House of Commons and Lords.

The report notes that “repeated requests notwithstanding, no representative of either Indian central government or the J&K state government has agreed to give evidence, verbally or in writing".

The release of this report is being seen as the second big breakthrough after the one previously published by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in June 2018, highlighting the human rights violations in IoK.

The report proposes a number of recommendations to alleviate the sufferings of Kashmiri people, recommending that the Indian government repeal the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act 1990 and enable prosecution of armed forces and security personnel in the civilian judicial system; initiate a comprehensive public investigation into the identities of bodies in mass and unmarked graves, with an independent forensic verification process, and provide for a full freedom of information mechanism for the families of suspected victims of enforced disappearance; and immediately ban the use of pellet firing shotguns.

It also proposes that the IoK government must open its prisons to international inspection and the Jammu and Kashmir leadership urgently provide a strict and limited statutory basis for administrative detention powers, in line with international legal principles, by repealing or amending the Public Safety Act 1978.

The report further notes that the Indian and Pakistani governments work to resume regularised visa-regulated civilian travel across the Line of Control (LoC) and reunite separated families.

The APPKG report draws references from the reports on IoK by Amnesty International, Chatham House, and Crisis Watch Group. It says the region remains heavily militarised, with draconian laws that provide legal cover for human rights abuses by security officials in force, giving the army widespread powers to search houses, arrest people without warrants, and detain suspects indefinitely.

It makes a reference to the Human Rights Watch (HRW) March 2018 commentary on the conditions in Kashmir where it was stressed that the Indian occupation forces use brutal force against protestors.

“Though protests in Kashmir can be violent at times, the response of the security forces should always be proportionate. Lethal force should be the last resort, used only when lives are threatened.

"Promptly investigating allegations of abuses and prosecuting those responsible is key to resolving this 'mess'", it had said.

The APPKG said it had considered a number of well-evidenced submissions alleging forced disappearances in IoK. The report also notes: “Use of pellets Armed security personnel in J&K have rightly drawn condemnation for the use rubber and steel pellet-firing shotguns as a primary means of crowd dispersal, including to break up non-violent protests.

"Heartbreaking images of Kashmiri civilians disfigured as a result of injuries sustained by pellet fire – and in several dozen cases, permanently blinded – have come uniquely to emblematize the disregard for human life which too often characterizes policing tactics in J&K.

"Such pellet-firing weaponry is not just liable to disfigure its victims; it is also massively inaccurate.”

The report mentioned that during a visit by the APPKG's committee members to Azad Kashmir and the LoC, they heard from a series of witnesses, including Jammu and Kashmir Solidarity Movement chairperson Raja Najabat Hussain.

The report informs that it had met dozens of Kashmiris who have fled from IoK to Azad Kashmir, women who have lost loved ones, victims across the LoC who spoke of how the Indian forces target them daily and how heavily militarised their homes are in the IoK.

The APPKG delegation also visited a refugee camp at Thotha, near Muzzafarabad, and heard firsthand from people whose families had been split apart — in some cases, for several decades — between the IoK and Azad Kashmir.

“We heard from families, principally women and children, now in supported accommodation provided by the AJK Government, who have either fled or been displaced from the Indian administered areas," it notes.

The APPKG delegation was allowed access to the crossing point at Chakothi at the LoC on the Azad Kashmir side, where the level of fortification and nature of the division was self-evident.

“We heard about the scale and resources behind the militarisation of both sides of the Line of Control, and the alleged one-soldier-per-12 population ratio of military personnel on the Indian-administered side.

"The delegation heard from four villagers living in the vicinity of the border, including from the son of a man killed in August 2018 by a mortar strike seemingly visited on their property at random; many witnesses testified to the arbitrariness of such attacks, such that their primary effect – and by design – is to maintain a climate of fear.

"The delegation also heard from a farmer who was the victim of a sniper attack, shot through the cheek and arm while tending to his land the previous month. These first-hand accounts were compelling and credible. They seemed to confirm that there are recent and ongoing Indian incidents affecting civilians across the LOC,” the report says.

It concludes: “In the meantime, we offer this report as our contribution to the debate on the need for human rights to respected, especially on the Indian-administered side.

"Far too many innocent lives have been lost already; far too many lives are blighted now. This is intolerable; it must end.”