Rights group urges end to restrictions in Kashmir

ANKARA

Marking Kashmir Solidarity Day, an international human rights group is urging an immediate end to "draconian" restrictions in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, a region whose semi-autonomous status was revoked last year.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Paris-based International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) said: "For the past six months, the people of Kashmir have been living under siege and denied their fundamental rights under the most draconian of measures."

Pakistan and Kashmiris around the world are observing Kashmir Solidarity Day, observed on Feb. 5 every year, to extend moral support to people in the disputed region. Started by former Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad, the day was officially adopted by the then government of late Benazır Bhutto in the early 1990s.

On Aug. 5, 2019, India scrapped special provisions in the Constitution, downgrading the status of Jammu and Kashmir into two centrally administered Union Territories (UT), thus putting the two territories under its direct rule.

The Indian government also imposed an indefinite curfew, shut down the internet and cut telephone lines for the public in the valley.

“These grave violations of human rights must come to an end, and accountability must be established for the serious violations that have occurred since Aug. 5,” the federation said, urging India to “fully reinstate communications” in the region.

It added: “The Indian government implemented repressive measures in Jammu & Kashmir to limit the rights to freedom of expression, association, peaceful assembly, and movement. The people of Jammu & Kashmir have now lived through the longest internet shutdown in India’s history, which is an unacceptable denial of their basic rights."

It asked New Delhi to "take immediate steps to reinstate and guarantee all fundamental freedoms in the region."

The group said that though accurate figures were unavailable, “thousands of arbitrary detentions have been reported since Aug. 5, 2019, including hundreds of detentions under the abusive 1978 Public Safety Act (PSA)."

It said that the reorganization and division of Jammu & Kashmir had also resulted in a number of measures that will have long-term implications for the human rights situation in the region, i.e. the disbanding of the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) of Jammu & Kashmir -- one of the few avenues available to locals for justice.

“More than 500 cases of alleged enforced disappearances were pending before the SHRC at the time of its disbandment,” it said.

Disputed region

Kashmir is held by India and Pakistan in parts but claimed by both in full. A small sliver of the region is also controlled by China.

Since the partition in 1947, the two countries have fought three wars -- in 1948, 1965 and 1971 -- two of them over Kashmir.

Some Kashmiri groups in Jammu and Kashmir have been fighting against Indian rule for independence, or unification with the neighboring Pakistan.

According to several human rights organizations, thousands of people have been killed, detained and tortured as a result of the conflict that escalated in 1989.