Human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir

Human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir, a disputed territory administered by India, are an ongoing issue. The abuses range from mass killings, forced disappearances, torture, rape and sexual abuse to political repression and suppression of freedom of speech. The Indian central reserve police force, border security personnel and various militant groups have been accused and held accountable for committing severe human rights abuses against Kashmiri civilians. A WikiLeaks issue accused India of systemic human rights abuses, it stated that US diplomats possessed evidence of the apparent wide spread use of torture by Indian police and security forces.

Terrorist violence led by Jammu Kashmir Liberation front has caused ethnic cleansing of several hundred thousand Kashmiri Hindu Pandits, who comprises an estimated 3% of the Kashmir valley's population.

According to Asia Watch, the militant organizations forced the Hindus residing in the Kashmir valley to flee and become refugees in Delhi and Jammu. Although there is controversy regarding whether or not all pandits left due to fear of violence or were they encouraged by government to leave in order to undermine the support for millitant movements. Reportedly, "Kashmiri militants could perpetrate such crime because of the aide and patronization it received from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). The chief perpetrators were the Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front and the Hizbul Mujahideen. They got “trained and armed” by the ISI. Ethnic cleansing continued till a vast majority of the Kashmiri Pandits were evicted out of the valley after having suffered many acts of violence, e.g. sexual assault on women, arson, torture, extortion of property etc. Some of the separatist leaders in Kashmir reject these allegations. The Indian government is endeavouring to reinstate the displaced Pandits in Kashmir. The remnants of Kashmiri Pandits have been living in the squalors in Jammu, but the most of them believe that, until this violence ceases to exist, returning to Kashmir is not an option.

A US state government finding reports that the Indian army in Jammu and Kashmir, has carried out extrajudicial killings of innocent civilians and suspected insurgents, however the report has also mentioned killings and abuse being carried out by insurgents and separatists. In 2010, statistics presented to the Indian government's Cabinet Committee on Security showed that for the first time since the 1980s, the number of civilian deaths attributed to the Indian forces was higher than those attributed to terrorist actions. In a 1993 report, Human Rights Watch claimed that militant organizations have targeted civilians. The official stance of the Indian Army was that 97% of the reports about the human rights abuse have been found to be "fake or motivated" based on the investigation performed by the Army.

Kashmiri insurgents
Kashmiri insurgents are also called as “freedom fighters“, fighting against the rule of India in Kashmir. According to a Time Magazine's article, in August 2008 half a million Kashmiri protesters at Srinagar crying "Azadi" (freedom) and waving Pakistani flags. Reports from Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the International Commission of Jurists have confirmed Indian reports of systematic human rights violations by militants which claim Jammu and Kashmir to be part of Pakistan. The Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) has also been blamed of carrying out human rights violations, ranging from kidnapping to ethnic cleansing of several hundred thousand Hindu Kashmiri Pandits. A 2010 US state departmnet report blamed separatist insurgents in Kashmir and other parts of the country of committing several serious abuses, including the killing of security personnel as well as civilians, and of engaging in widespread torture, rape, beheadings, kidnapping, and extortion.

In August 2000, militant groups killed 30 Hindu pilgrims in what became known as the 2000 Amarnath pilgrimage massacre. The Indian government blamed the Lashkar-e-Taiba for the killings. The BBC writes that "hundreds of Hindu labourers ha[d] been leaving the Kashmir Valley" in August 2000 due to targeted killings against Hindu workers.

Ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Sikhs
The Hindu Kashmiri Pandits, a small but prominent group, who had stably constituted approximately 4 to 5 per cent of the population of the Kashmir valley during Dogra rule (1846–1947), and 20 per cent of whom had left the Kashmir valley by 1950, began to leave in much greater numbers in the 1990s. According to a number of authors, approximately 100,000 of the total Kashmiri Pandit population of 140,000 left the valley during that decade. Other authors have suggested a higher figure for the exodus, ranging from the entire population of over 150,000, to 190,000 of a total Pandit population of 200,000, to a number as high as 253,000. The US government has reported on the terrorist threat to Pandits still living in the Kashmir region.

During the eruption of armed rebellion the Islamic insurgency has claimed to have specifically targeted the Pandits and violated their human rights. Reports by Indian government state 219 Kashmiri pandits were killed and around 1,40,000 migrated due to millitancy while over 3000 stayed in the valley The local organisation of pandits in Kashmir, Kashmir Pandit Sangharsh Samiti claimed that 399 Kashmiri Pandit were killed by insurgents.

The violence was condemned and labeled as ethnic cleansing in a 2006 resolution passed by the United States Congress. It stated that the Islamic terrorists infiltrated the region in 1989 and began an ethnic cleansing campaign to convert Kashmir to a Muslim state. According to the same, since then nearly 400,000 Pandits were either murdered or forced to leave their ancestral homes.

According to Hindu American Foundation report, the rights and religious freedom of Kashmiri Hindus have been severely curtailed since 1989, when there was an organized and systematic campaign by Islamist militants to cleanse Hindus from Kashmir. Less than 4,000 Kashmiri Hindus remain in the valley, reportedly living with daily threats of violence and terrorism.

The CIA has reported nearly 506,000 people, about half of which are Pandit Hindus are displaced due to the insurgency. The United Nations Commission on Human Rights reports that there are roughly 1.5 million refugees from Indian-administered Kashmir, bulk of whom arrived in Pakistan-administered Kashmir and in Pakistan after the situation on the Indian side worsened in 1989 insurgency.

Post-1989, Kashmiri Pandits and other minority groups in Jammu and Kashmir have been targets of ethnic cleansing by Jihadi elements which India alleges and blames on the Inter-Services Intelligence. The Kashmiri Pandits, a community of Hindu Brahmins, then comprising 5% of the population of the state were the primary targets of Islamic militants, who also sought to also eliminate Kashmir's record of 5000 years of Hindu Sanskrit culture and scholarship as well as the tolerant indigenous multiculturalism referred to as Kashmiriat. As many as 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits fled the state and ethnic violence is considered to have killed 30,000 people. Muslim paramilitaries raped, tortured and killed thousands of Kashmiri Pandits, burnt their temples, idols and holy books.

According to Bhatt a United Nations adviser, the houses of Kashmir Pandits have been burnt, many killed, and that there has been "an almost total ethnic cleansing of Kashmir Pandits from Kashmir by fundamentalist forces of terrorism organised and supported from Pakistan".

Other minorities such as Kashmiri Sikhs were also targeted. According to Chitkara the killing of Sikhs near Anantnag in 2001, by the Jehadis was aimed at ethnic cleansing. Hindus have migrated from most of the Kashmir valley, Sikhs who form a very small percentage could be forced to migrate in the wake of such killings. The Indian agencies are also blamed for the massacre of Sikhs at Chattisingpora, which killed 37 Siks at the time of Clinton‘s visit to India.

Indian Armed Forces
Thousands of Kashmiris have reported to be killed by Indian security forces in custody, extradjudicial executions and enforced disappearances and these human right violations are said to be carried out by Indian security forces under total impunity. Civilians including women and children have been killed in "reprisal" attacks by Indian security forces and as a "collective punishment" villages and neighbourhoods have been burn down and women raped. International NGO's as well as the US State Department have documented human rights abuses including disappearances, torture and arbitrary executions carried out during India's counter terrorism operations United Nations has expressed serious concerns over large number of killings by Indian security forces. Human Rights Watch has also accused the Indian security forces of using children as spies and messengers, although the Indian government denies this allegation. Torture, widely used by Indian security, the severity described as beyond comprehension by amnesty international has been responsible for the huge number of deaths in custody The Telegraph, citing a WikiLeaks report quotes the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that Indian security forces were physically abusing detainees by beatings, electrocutions and sexual interference. These detainees weren't Islamic insurgents or Pakistani-backed insurgents but civilians, in contrast to India's continual allegations of Pakistani involvement. The detainees were "connected to or believed to have information about the insurgents". According to ICRC, 681 of the 1296 detainees whom it interviewed claimed torture. US officials have been quoted reporting "terrorism investigations and court cases tend to rely upon confessions, many of which are obtained under duress if not beatings, threats, or in some cases torture." Amnesty International accused security forces of exploiting the Armed Forces Special Powers Act that enables them to "hold prisoners without trial". The group argues that the law, which allows security to detain individuals for as many as two years "without presenting charges, violating prisoners’ human rights".

Indian Army
The soldiers of the 4th Rajputana Rifles of the Indian Army on 23 February 1991 lauanched a search operation in a village Kunan Poshpora, in the Kupwara district of Jammu and Kashmir and allegedly gang raped 53 women of all ages. However, Human Rights organizations including Human Rights Watch have reported that the number of raped women could be as high as 100. The Indian Army is also accused of many massacres such as Bomai Killing, 2009, Gawakadal massacre, 2006 Kulgam massacre, Zakoora And Tengpora Massacre, 1990, Sopore massacre. They also didn‘t speared the health care system of the valley. The major hospitals witnessed the crackdowns and army men even entered the operation theaters in search of terrorist patients.

Border Security Force
On 22 October 1993, the 13th Battalion of the Border Security Forces was accused of arbitrarily firing on a crowd and killing 37 civilians in Bijbehara The number of reported dead and wounded vary by source. Amnesty International reported that at least 51 people died and 200 were wounded on that day.

The Indian government conducted two official enquiries and the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) conducted a third. In March 1994 the government indicted the Border Security Force (BSF) for firing into the crowd "without provocation" and charged 13 BSF officers with murder. In another incident which took place at Handwara on 25 January 1990, 9 protesters where killed by the same unit.

Central Reserve Police Force
During the Amarnath land transfer controversy more than 40 unarmed protesters were killed by the personnels of Central Reserve Police Force. At least 300 were detained under Public Safety Act, including teenagers. The same practice was again repeated by the personnels of the Central Reserve Police Force, during the 2010 Kashmir Unrest, which resulted in 112 deaths, including many teenager protesters at various incidents.

Special Operations Group
The Special Operations Group was raised in 1994 for counter terrorism. A volunteer force, mainly came for promotions and cash rewards, comprising police officers and policemen from the Jammu and Kashmir Police. The group is accused of torture and costodial killings. A Senior Superintendent of this group and his deputy are among the 11 personnels, who were convicted for a fake encounter, which killed a local carpenter, and was labelled as a millitant to get the promotions and rewards.

Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958
In July 1990 Indian Armed Forces were given special powers under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) that gives protection to Indian Armed Forces personnel from being prosecuted. The law provides them a shield, when committing human rights violations and has been criticized by Human Rights Watch as being wrongly used by the forces. This law is widely condemned by human rights groups. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navanethem Pillay has urged India to repeal AFSPA and to investigate the disappearances in Kashmir.

"“All three special laws in force in the state assist the government in shielding the perpetrators of human rights violations from prosecution, and encourage them to act with impunity. Provisions of the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act clearly contravene international human rights standards laid down in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as members of the UN Human Rights Committee have pointed out. One Committee member felt that provisions of the act -- including imunity from prosecution -- were highly dangerous and encouraged violations of the right to life“."

- A clipping from a report published by the Amnesty International, 1995.

Fake encounters
According to the Srinagar-based Association of Parents of Displaced Persons (APDP), a minimum of 8,000 people have disappeared since the insurgency began. In February 2003, the government of India-administered Kashmir, led by Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, told the state legislative assembly that 3,744 people were missing and that many of those reported missing since 1990 were actually in Pakistan, where they had signed up to be trained as militants.

Hundreds of civilian's including women and children have been reported to be extrajudicially executed by Indian security forces and killings concealed as fake encounters. Despite government denial, Indian security officials have reportedly confessed to human right watch of widespread occurrence of fake encounters and its encouragement for awards and promotions According to a BBC interview with an anonymous security person, 'fake encounter' killings are those in which security personnel kill someone in cold blood while claiming that the casualty occurred in a gun battle. It also asserts that the security personnel are Kashmiris and "even surrendered militants". In 2010 three men were reported missing proceeding these missing reports 3 men claimed to be militants were killed in a staged gun battle the army also claimed they had found Pakistani currency among the dead. The major was subsequently suspended and a senior soldier transferred from his post. In 2011, a Special Police Officer and an Indian Army Jawan were charged by the Kashmir police for murder of a civilian whom the duo had killed in an encounter claiming that he was a top Lashkar-e-Taiba militant.

Disappearances
Indian security forces have been implicated in many reports for enforced disappearances of thousands of Kashmiris where the security forces deny having their information and/or custody. This is often in association with torture or extrajudicial killing. The number of men disappeared have been so many to have a new term "half-widows" for their wives who end up impoverished. Human right activists estimate the number of disappeared over eight thousand, last seen in government detention. These are believed to be dumped in thousands of mass graves across Kashmir

Mass graves
Thousands of mass graves have been identified all over Kashmir by human right activists believed to contain bodies of thousands of Kashmiris of enforced disappearances. A state human rights commission inquiry confirmed there are thousands of bullet-ridden bodies buried in unmarked graves in Jammu and Kashmir. Of the 2730 bodies uncovered in 4 of the 14 districts, 574 bodies were identified as missing locals in contrast to the Indian governments insistence that all the graves belong to foreign militants According to a new deposition submitted by Parvez Imroz and his field workers asserted that the total number of unmarked graves were about 6,000. The British parliament commented on the recent discovery and expressed its sadness and regret of over 6,000 unmarked graves. Christof Heyns, a special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, has warned India that “all of these draconian laws had no place in a functioning democracy and should be scrapped.”

Extra Judicial killing by security personnel
In a 1994 report, Human Rights Watch described summary executions of detainees as a "hallmark" of counter-insurgency operations by Indian security forces in Kashmir. The report further stated that such extrajudicial killings were often administered within hours of arrest, and were carried out not as aberrations but as a "matter of policy". In a 1995 report, Amnesty International stated that hundred of civilians had been victims of such killings, which were often claimed by officers as occurring during "encounters" or "cross-fire". A 2010 US state department report cited extrajudicial killings by security forces in areas of conflict such as Kashmir as a major human rights problem in India.

Suicide
According to a report, 17,000 people mostly women have committed suicide during the last 20 years in the Valley. According to a study by the Medecins Sans Frontieres, "“Women in Kashmir have suffered enormously since the separatist struggle became violent in 1989-90. Like the women in other conflict zones, they have been raped, tortured, maimed and killed. A few of them were even jailed for years together. Kashmiri women are among the worst sufferers of sexual violence in the world. ‘Sexual violence has been routinely perpetrated on Kashmiri women, with 11.6% of respondents saying they were victims of sexual abuse’,”" At the beginning of the insurgency there were 1200 patients in the valley‘s sole mental hospital. The hospital is now overcrowded with more than 100,000 patients.