Kashmiri Heart Touching Video-Reality in Kashmir

The Killing of Kashmir... 49 minute documentary

Indian Army Brutal Killing: 2000 Graves Found in Kashmir

NEW DEHLI: More than 2,000 corpses have been found buried in several unmarked graves in Indian-administered Kashmir, believed to be victims of the disputed region’s separatist movement, a government human rights commission said in a report.

The graves were found in dozens of villages near the Line of Control (LoC), the de facto border between Pakistan and India in the Himalayan region.

“At 38 places visited in north Kashmir, there were 2,156 unidentified dead bodies buried in unmarked graves,” the inquiry report by the Indian government’s Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission (J&KSHRC) said. The commission was established by the government in 1997 to investigate human rights violations.

The report — prepared by an 11-member team headed by a senior police superintendent — said that DNA profiling should be used to match unidentified bodies with relatives to resolve the controversy. “The scope for DNA extraction from remains of these unidentified bodies buried in unmarked graves of north Kashmir is still very bright. As the time will go on… chances will be more and more reduced,” the report said.

An independent group based in Srinagar, the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice (IPT), had in 2009 documented unidentified bodies buried in the region’s northern villages.

Indian and international rights groups called for a probe into whether the unmarked graves held bodies of civilians who have ‘disappeared’ as Indian security forces struggled to contain insurgency in the region.

The IPT says 8,000 people have gone missing there during 20 years of insurgency against rule from New Delhi, most of those after they were arrested by Indian security personnel.

The Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), which estimates around 10,000 people went missing during nearly two decades of separatist revolt, says many missing people may have ended up in these unmarked graves.

“We appeal to international human rights groups and Indian authorities to identify the people buried,” said Parveena Ahanger, founder and chairperson of the APDP.

International human rights groups have also repeatedly asked the Indian authorities to investigate the unmarked graves.

Indian officials have repeatedly claimed that those buried in unmarked graves were militants — most of those Pakistanis — who were killed in clashes with security forces. They also argue that many of the missing locals had meanwhile crossed to Pakistan to join militant groups. Nearly 50,000 people have been killed in mainly Muslim Kashmir since an insurgency against New Delhi’s rule began in 1989.

On Saturday, Indian soldier shot dead 12 “militants trying to cross from Pakistan into the disputed region.”

Indian security forces in Kashmir have been accused of murdering innocent civilians in staged gun battles and passing them off as militants to earn rewards and promotions.

Source ; Column.pk

India’s Kashmir admission: too little, too late

-Photo by Dilnaz Boga/Dawn.com

The news that the Jammu & Kashmir State Human Rights Commission has officially acknowledged mass graves holding more than 2,000 bodies – 574 of them now identified as local residents, i.e. not foreign terrorists – is welcome but leaves a bitter taste. It’s good that the Indian establishment can allow such an admission, but so what? That’s surely little consolation to the many “half-widows” of Kashmiris “disappeared” by Indian forces.
We could argue forever – and have been – about what Kashmir’s political status should be, or who is most to blame for the massive death and destruction wrought there over the past two decades. But morally honest Indians can’t avoid India’s culpability.
Indian-held Kashmir was the scene of an important early chapter in my political education. I first went there in 1994, initially lured by the romance of seeing the landscape, and meeting the people, that V.S. Naipaul had memorably written about in the brilliant middle section of his 1964 book An Area of Darkness. I spent many weeks in the Valley on several visits that year and the next. I put much of what I learned in Kashmir into the early chapters of my book Alive and Well in Pakistan because, while Kashmir is no more clearly part of Pakistan than of India, I wanted to show that, borders and Lines of Control notwithstanding, in truth the subcontinent is a seamless whole. I also wanted to do justice to the way my interest in Kashmir had led to my longstanding interest in Pakistan.
I spent a lot of time on the ground in Kashmir with Kashmiris in 1994 and ‘95, and I listened not only to Kashmiris’ stories but also to their opinions and to what they said they wanted. Maybe because of my own provincial background, I’ve never appreciated the presumption that the naïve or wishful perspectives of people from small, neglected places should be considered somehow less valid than the views of people who hold power – unless it’s true that might makes right, which it isn’t.
“We are hungry for peace,” a young Kashmiri told me. “But at the same time, we want to live with honor.” The Kashmir problem was “not a law and order problem,” another insisted. “It is the deserved rights that we want. No Kashmiri will believe any Indian, ever again.” Said the human rights activist Jalil Andrabi: “We thought that if people of Romania can go out on the streets and get rid of a dictator, why can’t we go out on the streets in Kashmir?”
“We have to think about the future of our country, the future of our children,” a businessman told me. “We don’t want to become another Afghanistan. My son, he was three when militancy started. Now he is almost in his eighth year. So good years are passing by, they are not coming back.” That was more than 15 years ago, so that man’s son – if he’s still alive – is now in his early twenties.
Jalil Andrabi made a strong impression on me. He was a likeable and impressive young lawyer who, with colleagues in the Kashmir Bar Association, traveled to remote villages; painstakingly documented atrocities committed by Indian forces, and filed usually fruitless writs in the High Court. It broke one’s heart to think of the effort they put into raw documentation, the naming of persons and putting on record of events that otherwise would have been forgotten by all but the obscure sufferers themselves.
“What we believe is that human rights are guaranteed to every human being who is born on earth,” Andrabi told me. “India recognizes this right, under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.”
The last time I saw him was in his office, on the dingy upper floor of a dusty building in Srinagar. I had come because he wanted to give me some documents. He gave me a Pepsi and prevailed on me to stay for a few minutes. I asked him why he did what he did. He felt compelled to do it, he said; it had to be done; truth and justice had to be served, however ineffectually. Otherwise, he said, he could not have lived with himself.
I felt too tired to take notes – I was leaving the next morning and had many things on my mind – and among my many regrets is that I felt too distracted and rushed to stay longer with Jalil Andrabi that day. His words brought to mind something the American writer Wendell Berry once wrote: “Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.”
Jalil Andrabi was kidnapped in murky circumstances on March 8, 1996. Later that month his body was found floating in the River Jhelum, its eyes gouged out. I was in Bangkok, where I was living at the time, when I heard the report of his death on CNN.


 
Ethan Casey is the author of Alive and Well in Pakistan and Overtaken By Events: A Pakistan Road Trip. He can be reached at www.facebook.com/ethancaseyfans and www.ethancasey.com


Source ; Dawn Media Group

Kalaroos: Where dead have number

Martyrs Graveyard Kalroos, Kupwara.

The first one reads “Number 1, Martyred on August 24, 2009, Jawansaal (Young)”, the second one reads “Number 2 “Martyred on August 24, Safaid Dhadi Wala Bhodha (white bearded old man)”. Scattered between few graves that have traditional tombstones, there are many that have tin plates inserted on top. Numbers and scanty details of the appearance of dead is all that is known about the people who lay burried.

The caretakers of ‘Martyrs Graveyard’ here, situated in Lolab alongside Kupwara-Machil main road around 112 km from Srinagar, started to number the unknown dead after mass graves surfaced in Uri  region in neighbouring Baramulla district. The graveyard which spans over two thousand square yards of land is maintained by the local Auqaf Committee.

“On the directions of Auqaf we started to write down the numbers and identification marks of the deceased on tin plates to keep the count and little bit identification,” says Ghulam Ahmed Bhat, who is one of the caretakers, while pointing towards a portion where the grave fill is scattered. The bodies have been exhumed.

Three youth from Nadihal, who were dubbed as militants and killed in Machil Sector along the Line of Control (LoC), last April, were buried in these half-filled graves, he says. The youth were identified by their heirs after pictures of their bodies appeared in local dailies.

But their remains exist even after bodies have been excavated. A torn jacket and a blanket hang on the barbed fencing. Bhat informs they belonged to the Nadihal youth.

Locals say more than 85 unidentified suspected militants lay buried  along with some residents. But, most of the graves remain unmarked with some of them not even noticeable due to passage of time. Not many have turned up to claim the dead.

“A family from Highgam and two families from Zainagair in Sopore visited. They cried in despair lamenting the fact that they were not present during the funeral rites of their dear ones who were militants,” he says, adding the families had somehow learnt that their dear ones lie buried here.

The families came and erected epitaphs on their graves. “Now the families of the trio occasionally visit the graveyard and distribute dates, Turmeric-rice (Teher), milk or fruits among the locals for the solace of their hearts,” he adds.

Fear is writ large on the faces of locals who seem reluctant to talk openly about the issue. To break the ice seems quite difficult and it is only after a disclosure of identity that they gradually open up.  “They died, it was their fate, but even after death, they have been stripped of their identity,” laments Abdul Samad, an elderly local.

“When the relatives of disappeared persons come to ascertain if their dear ones are buried here, we suggest them to visit local police station,” Samad says.

However, identity of just seven people is known and even the police have no written record about those interred.

“Our response might be annoying their sentiments, but what shall we do? The people we have buried here were unknown to us though seemingly Kashmiri locals,” he remarks.

A local police official not authorized to speak says they do not have any records in the police post regarding the names or whereabouts of the deceased.

“Most of the times I could not muster courage to see the dead as they had disfigured skulls caused due to heavy mortar shells or decaying,” says Abdul Aziz, another resident who joined Samad and Bhat after noticing movement in the graveyard.

Locals claim that Lolab valley has many such graves scattered in forests and villages including Sogam, Chandigam, Lalpora, Kuligam, Khurhama, Bagalsar, and Moori, Boinar, where unidentified suspected militants lie buried.

And, with the confirmation of unmarked graves by State Human Rights Commission, locals are questioning the claims made by the government that the unknown graves are those of militants and not of civilians. Villagers in this region these days discuss “cash for kill” although covertly.

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Chachal: Where a blind guards unknown dead

 

 

 

Source; www.kashmirdispatch.com

Kashmir war crimes.wmv

Buried Evidence: Evidence of Indian Army War Crimes in Kashmir

Indian Army in action in Kashmir

 

 

BURIED EVIDENCE: Unknown, Unmarked, and Mass Graves in Indian-administered Kashmir

International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir (IPTK) announces the release of its report at a press conference on Wednesday, December 02, 2009, in Srinagar, Kashmir.
BURIED EVIDENCE documents 2,700 unknown, unmarked, and mass graves, containing 2,943+ bodies, across 55 villages in Bandipora, Baramulla, and Kupwara districts of Kashmir, based on applied research conducted between November 2006-November 2009...

 See the rest of the article HERE