India: Stop charade and let the people of Kashmir decide … Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai Chairman World Forum for Peace & justice

81st session of the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) is taking place in Geneva under the chairmanship of Dr. Claude Heller of Mexico. CAT is composed of 10 internationally known independent experts. It began on October 28 and will continue until November 22, 2024. CAT defines its objective in these words, “In order to ensure adequate protection for all persons against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, over the years the United Nations has adopted universally applicable standards. These standards were ultimately embodied in international declarations and conventions. In developing this valuable instrument, the United Nations did not merely put in writing in a series of articles a body of principles and pious hopes, the implementation and observance of which would not be guaranteed by anything or anyone. It set up also a monitoring body, the Committee against Torture, whose main function is to ensure that the Convention is observed and implemented.”

Torture, inhuman and degrading punishment in my judgement, deserve special abhorrence and deterrents. They should all be made international crimes with no immunity for any government official implicated in the villainies.

It is undisputable that fundamental human rights are universal. That is the tacit assumption of all the declarations, conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They know no religious, national, or political boundaries. Everyone stands on the same plane when human rights are at issue. There is no denying that international declarations and conventions need strengthening. Unfortunately, these noble declarations and conventions were never applied when the world powers saw the bleeding body that of Kashmir.

Dr. Nigel S. Rodley of Great Britain and former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture reported that the security forces systematically practice torture against persons in Jammu and Kashmir in order to coerce them to confess to militant activity, to reveal information about suspected militants, or to inflict punishment for suspected support or sympathy with militants…[M]ethods of torture included beating, rape, crushing the leg muscles with a wooden roller, burning with heated objects, and electric shocks…The U.N. Rapporteurs on Torture and Extrajudicial Killings renewed their requests to visit during the year, but the Government did not permit them to do so.”

Earlier, UN Human Rights Committee issued a statement on July 24, 2024, that, “The Committee was concerned that some provisions of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Acts and counter-terrorism legislation are not in compliance with the Covenant. The Committee also voiced its concern over the application of counter-terrorism legislation for decades in “disturbed areas”, such as districts in Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, has led to widespread and grave human rights violations, including excessive use of force leading to unlawful killings, prolonged arbitrary detention, sexual violence, forced displacement and torture. It also asked India to establish a mechanism to initiate a process to acknowledge responsibility and ascertain the truth regarding human rights violations in disturbed areas.”

UN human rights experts, including Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders urged the Indian authorities to stop targeting Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez. “We call on the Indian authorities to immediately release him and ensure his rights to liberty and security,” they added. “We regret that the Government continues to use the UAPA as a means of coercion to restrict civil society’s, the media’s and human rights defenders’ fundamental freedoms in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir as well as in the rest of the country. We therefore once again urge the Government to bring this legislation in line with India’s international legal obligations under human rights law,” the experts said.

What is the crime of Khurram Parvez, one may ask? Khurram Parvez documented a 549-page report entitled, “Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control in Indian Administered Jammu and Kashmir.’ He wrote, “You cannot understand human rights if you don’t understand the context. Human rights abuses are taking place all around the world, in many places, including in India. But the difference is these are happening because of aberrations, deficiencies in governance, and because people transgress the law. What is happening in Kashmir is not an aberration, it is part of an institutionalized policy of the Indian government.”
Mr. Parvez pleaded for the international community, whose assistance to date had been ‘dismal’ and all the organizations working for Kashmir to bring pressure to lobby for a United Nations ‘probe’ on the situation in Kashmir. Without such intervention, he said, ‘we cannot proceed forward. We are now at a stage where it is a complete dead end. We have done everything; we have met everyone in the government, but nothing has changed.
The prologue to this report was written by Professor Juan E. Mendez, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Professor Mendez writes, “I am convinced that a report, when it is as rigorous, evidence based and persuasive as this one is, constitutes a building block towards public awareness of the tragedy of torture.” However, the dreams of Professor Mendez were shattered when the world powers turned a blind eye to his expectation that “It (the report) can also spearhead democratic debate about measures of public policy needed to re-establish the rule of law in this extremely sensitive area (Kashmir).”
It is well established that human rights defenders are cornerstones of the UN human rights machinery. Individuals must be energized to pick up the cudgels of enforcement, whether by way of free speech, legal services, political leadership, revelations, or otherwise. Thus, it seems to me, some special international immunity akin to diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention is worth considering for credentialed defenders of human rights.
The repression of Kashmir’s soul has not diminished the pain or the need for India to meet those face to face who have had nothing but a boot to the belly and a cane to the back. The voice of Kashmir not only remains as vibrant and shrill as in the very beginning, it is yet even stronger. It is time that India showed some honesty and forthrightness in its dealings with Kashmir.

The presence of 900,000 Indian troops plus seventy-seven years of conflict would seem to most observers a clear indication that Kashmir’s differences with India are intractable and irresolvable given the persistent resistance, despite the serious imbalance of power between the two.
It is our hope that the reports of UN Human Rights Committee, CAT and others will mobilize the policy makers of the members states of the UN Human Rights Council to do everything in their constitutional power to stop the torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of the people of Kashmir. It is further our hope that the policy makers of these member countries will look to solving the root cause of the problem – the unfulfilled promise of self-determination as guaranteed by successive United Nations Security Council resolutions.

The world powers should persuade India that it is in India’s interest to end the systematic torture and officially sanctioned inhuman and degrading treatment in Kashmir. It is time to end the charade. It is time to allow the people of Kashmir to sort out their own affairs and determine their own future.
Dr. Fai is also the Secretary general, World Kashmir Awareness Forum.
He can be reached at: WhatsApp: 1-202-607-6435. Or. gnfai2003@yahoo.com
www.kashmirawareness.org