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mutilated. The autopsy report said that Andrabi had probably been killed some 14 days earlier. He had apparently died of gun shot injuries to his head on which there were also injuries inflicted by a blunt weapon.

An order of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court of late 1996 noted “the fact that the functionaries of the Union of India have not been cooperating with the Investigating Team in a proper manner. We are sad to find that even after eight months, (the) postmortem report has not been famished to (the) Investigating Team. Mr. Advocate General has taken it upon himself to look into the matter and make the report available to the Investigating Team before the next date”. At the time of writing this report, in mid-March 1997, Amnesty International was informed that the postmortem report had still not been submitted as required by the High Court.

To Amnesty International’s knowledge, no one has so far been arrested, nor has nay member of the security forces been suspended in connection with the killing of Jam Andrabi. The killing of Jam Andrabi caused shock around the world. For example, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in early April 1996 urged the Indian Government to undertake a “thorough investigation~~ aimed at “establishing the facts and imposing sanctions on those found guilty”.

1’HE NEW GOVERNMENT IN JAMIMU AND KASHMIIR

Amnesty International seeks to constructively engage with the Government of India and the newly elected state government of Jammu and Kashmir on the wider issue of impunity that is key to the organization’s concern about the delay in the investigations of the killing of Jail Andrabi.

Amnesty International has noted with interest the announcement made by the Government of Chief Minister Dr. Farooq Abdullah in October 1996 and approved by the state cabinet in January 1997, that a permanent Jammu and Kashmir human rights commission is to be established. A senior official stated that defence matters are governed by Defence of India Rules and that the army is under the control of the central government. This implies that a state human rights commission will not be able to deal with the vast majority of abuses which in Jammu and Kashmir are reportedly perpetrated by the army, the paramilitary forces or the renegades acting at their behest.

Amnesty International’s recommendations Amnesty International calls on the Government of Jammu and Kashmir

to ensure that the investigation into the killing of Jam Andrabi is speedily concluded and that its results made public and that all those found to have in some way been involved in it, by actively participating int it, ordering or condoning it or permitting the truth to be covered up, are immediately suspended and criminally charged;
to publicly commit themselves to ending impunity and to. actively implement such commitment by investigating all past reports of human rights violations, bringing to justice all those found responsible for abuses and providing redress to victims or victims’ families
to inform all security personnel that violations will be not tolerated and that perpetrators will not be shielded.

Amnesty International calls on the state government of Jammu and Kashmir and the Government of India:

to issue clear instructions to state officials to cooperate filly and expedite the investigation into the death of Jam Andrabi;
to ensure that the Jammu and Kashmir Human Rights Commission be granted a mandate that will not exclude investigation of human rights violations perpetrated by security forces as an institution with limited authority will neither be able to deal with the most severe human rights abuses committed in the state nor succeed in rebuilding the trust of people in Jammu and Kashmir that justice will be done;
to further ensure that lawyers and human rights activists in the state who have played an active role in documenting human rights violations will be given a role in the Commission;
to ensure transparency and openness by permitting international human rights organizations like Amnesty International and UN Human Rights mechanisms including the special Rapporteur on torture regular access to the state

Amnesty International International Secretariat I Easton Street London WC I 8DJ United Kingdom.

The Indian Lie

Indian propaganda declares that there is complete peace and amity in Kashmir. It is a big lie.

An extract from Kashmir Times dated 28th Jan. 1998 gives a’ different picture of the situation in Kashmir) occupied by India.

“During Inder Kamal Gujral’s second visit to the state, the state government washed its hands off the much publicized return and rehabilitation plan by putting the ball in the center’s court with a demand of the whopping Rs. 2,700 crore. The vulnerable people were left to Gods mercy without drawing any lessons from the Sangrampora massacre. But what we have now is at once dreadful and demoralizing. The state government, the chief minister has declared, shall not take the migrants back to their homes and hearths in the Valley for the time being. They are stupid fools. Says he of the militants and their mentors. But what of a government which is neither aware of the presence and movement of the such elements in different parts of the Valley and other areas nor able to prevent, what the chief minister calls, attempt from across the border to disturb peace and amity in the state? Be that as it may the situation as it prevails now demands that the state government consign the migrants rehabilitation plan to archives and prepare itself for fresh exodus. However, it should not be hoping against hope that other players on Kashmiris political chessboard will not feel so demoralized as the National Conference leadership has declared it is. The Humyet Conference and other organizations will have to go beyond organizing hartals against the Ganderbal massacre. Energy and resources will have to be pooled in both the provinces of the state to restore and strengthen mutual goodwill. Nothing will be more unfortunate than the concerned getting overtaken by a sense of defeat and demoralization. The challenges offered by the situation have to be faced with determination by drawing on peoples inherent faith in the principle of peace, amity and respect for different faiths. The void created by the popular government’s public declaration of utter helplessness has to be filled. The sooner it is done, the better it will be for the state, its people and of course the rest of the country.

Human Rights Violations by the Indian Armed Forces Report KASHMIR MIRROR

Note:- We here present excerpts from a report prepared by Indian human rights organizations which was recently released in New Delhi. We present it as a testimony of Indian human rights violations.

Editor (Kashmir Mirror).

The Security Forces are frequently alleged to have violated peoples rights in the course of counterinsurgency operations. A total of 1004 persons have been killed by security forces (including the Jammu and Kashmir police) during the period October 1996- May 1997. Officially, all these are killings in the course of combat between the forces and the armed militants. Many of them are not. There are at least two ways in which a killing may take place at the hands of the armed forces other than in the course of operation permitted by the Armed Forces (special power) Act.

One is when a person or persons who have no weapons in their hands or who are in no position to use them to cause violence are shot down by the forces.

Two, when a person (whether militant. or civilian) is taken into custody and then killed by the forces. The extent to which killings by the armed forces are actually such incidents and not a killing condoned in law by the provisions of self-defence or defence of another person, or the specific powers granted by the Armed Forces (special powers) Act, have never been documented in detail in Jammu and Kashmir. We are not speaking here of lawful proof that a killing has taken place within the law. Such a mechanism does not exist. NO impartial (or any) investigation ever takes place to elicit the circumstances under which each killing has taken place. Nor does any court of law go into the report of such an investigation to decide whether any infringement of law has taken place. But even without such procedure, there can be a fair assessment of the kind that civil rights organization do on the basis of fact finding investigation in the rest of the country. Such investigation is very difficult, almost impossible to do in Kashmir. Both the magnitude of the killings and the extremely difficult circumstances make it impossible.

What is possible is only a vague estimate

Custodial torture and killing:

The Human Rights division of the Institute of Kashmir studies, in its recent publications, has said that about 2000 persons are estimated to have been killed in the custody of the security forces ever since the militancy began. There is no way of assessing the veracity of this figure.

In the first six months of the coming to power of the Farooq Abdullah government, they estimate that about 130 persons have died in custodial killings. Catch and kill is the brief and telling title they have given to this form of abuse. For it is that the armed forces torture the arrested person to elicit information and he dies in the course of the torture. This is what happens in deaths in police custody elsewhere.

In Kashmir the killing is often the purposeful culmination of torture. The torture may sometimes be to elicit information, but equally often it is brutal signal to other Kashmiris that had better not get into militancy, for this may be their fate. Whatever the propose of the torture, the torture is frequently extended till it become fatal. ??? else, bullets are pumped into the body at the end.

A look at the few who have survived the torture-either because the forces decided that he is not important enough to kill., or because some pressure, including payment of bribes, was exerted on them to save the life-will tell a lot about the nature and degree of torture. Our team met and spoke to patients in the Institute of Medical sciences at Soura, Srinagar (popularly known as the Soura hospital) on the evening of 28th May. They were in the nephrology ward of the hospital, i.e., they were being treated for kidney damage. The particular disease they are suffering from is called Rabdomyolisis. It is a severe form of kidney failure, and may result in death if not treated in time. The cause of this type of damage to the kidneys is said to be very severe beating on the thighs and (especially) the buttocks. Doctors at the nephrology ward of the Soura Hospital said that almost every day they get one patient with torture inflicted kidney damage. Only those who come to hospital within 24 hours have a chance of survival. If they require dialysis the patients will have to pay for the Hemodyalizer which the hospital does not supply. This means a cost of Rs~ 1000 to 1200 every day or once in every two days.

The doctors said that about 300 torture induced Rabdomyolisis patients have had dialysis done in the last six years. There is count of those who needed to but could not have dialysis for want of money, and those who could not even reach the hospital in time. The following are the brief details of the patients we met and spoke to at the nephrology ward of the Soura hospital on 28th May.

Ghulam Ahmed Bhat: A native of village Watlar, Ganderbal Tehsil, Srinagar district. Bhat is an employee, a technician in the cancer department of this very hospital. He lives in the hostel attached to the hospital. He was taken into custody by a unit of the Assam Rifles on 19th May with the permission of the hospital authorities. They tortured him for 5 days demanding that he should handover the weapon that he allegedly had, and released him on 23rd May. He was beaten severely all over his body with rifle-butts and given electric shocks to his penis. After release, his kidneys were found damaged and he was hospitalized
Ghulam Mohammad Chopan: A native of Rafiabad, Baramullah, he was taken into custody by the local Rashtirya Rifles (RR) camp on the night of 25 May. He too was told that he should handover the pistol he allegedly had with him. The nails on the forefingers of his left hand were brutally pulled out, and he was hit all over the body with rifles. He was released the next day with bleeding fingers and damaged kidneys
Nazir Ahmed Baghwan: A resident of Rainawani, Srinagar, and a farmer by occupation, he was picked up on 24 April by the Special Task Force of Jammu police. He was tortured severely and released on 5th May to be hospitalized at the Soura Institute. He was suspended from his wrists and thrashed with rifles. Then he was suspended upside down from his ankles and again thrashed for four hours. He was given electric shocks to his penis and his testicles. A thick string was tied to his penis and pulled with a jerk. While shocks were being given to him he was forced to drink four buckets of water, and water was splashed on the spot where the shocks were being given. That evidently enhances the impact of the shock. He is now in hospital with kidney damage and damage to him arms. Doctors treating him told our team that the muscles of his arms will never fully recover and he will not be able to work normally.
Mohammad Subhan Dar: A native of Baramulla, and an employee in the irrigation department of the State government, he was picked up because he looked like a militant, on 18th May, and tortured for just three hours. He has been in hospital for 10 days with damaged kidneys. He still carried huge dark bruises on his back when we saw him on 28th May. We also heard of another torture victim who was being treated in a different ward of the hospital. We could not meet him, but following is the information we gathered
Imtiaz Ahmed Bhat: A pre-university student, resident of Amira Kadal., Srinagar, he was arrested on 23rd May and released after a couple of days. He was in hospital with a ruptured and bleeding anus, the consequence of a rod being forces up the anus. Doctors said his condition was serious.

The above instances and the other examples of torture we heard of from victims, doctors, and the relatives of victims in the Valley, help us to identify the following forms of torture commonly used in Kashmir:

Beating repeatedly and hard for hours at a stretch with rifles and thick sticks all over the body, but especially the thighs and the buttocks, leading to kidney damage, and the disease of Rabdomyolisis. The person is often suspended (upright or upside down) while being beaten.

Keeping wooden rollers on the thighs, with the person lying on the stomach or on the back, and trampling upon the rollers, sliding up and down, crushing the thigh muscles, or else standing on the rollers and beating on the legs and soles of the feet with sticks and rifles.
Giving electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body such as penis and testicles. Splashing the organ with water simultaneously to enhance the impact of the application of current
Forcing the person to stand bending forward and keeping a lighted stove between the legs, thereby burning the legs, thighs and sexual organs. Or, in winter, forcing the person to sit or walk on snow without any protection to the skin
Sticking sticks and rods up the anus, causing rupture and hemorrhage inside
Forcing the persons head into water, sometimes even drain water, until he chokes to death. It will perhaps be said that these are not new to Kashmir and that the police (and army and paramilitary) operating anywhere in India indulge in all such forms of torture. That is true enough. All Civil Rights Organizations know of the various forms of torture used routinely by the forces in India. But we also know that the degree and severity of the torture is no where so barbarous as we have observed it to be in Kashmir. In Kashmir, the invariable result of these commonly used forms of torture is death or permanent disablement. It is possible to speculate about the reasons for this:

The army when it does police duties, whether it is counter-insurgency or suppression of a local riot, behave much more brutally then the police. This is the other face of the efficiency with which the army is usually credited. It is firstly, much less accountable to the law and the normal processes of Justice. Not that the police are greatly accountable, but the army is even less so, because the State wants it to be that way. Secondly, policemen have some degree of social accountability because they live and work the local community. Army personnel live in cantonments or barracks. They are outsiders in terms of language and culture, and contrived distinction between the civil and the military serves to keep them outside the local society. A unit of the army can conduct operations in one place for a while, and then be shifted to a totally different place, or sent back to its headquarters. All this lessens its social accountability
In Kashmir, the Indian armed forces are not just suppressing a revolt. They are, in addition to that, in their view and in that of most Indians, fighting India’s principal enemy, Pakistan. And, even otherwise generous-minded Indians give no quarter to Pakistan and its agents. Much has been said about the mindlessness of Indo-Pakistan enmity. No where does this mindlessness exhibit itself more brutally than in that extra bit of cruelty and callousness the army exhibits in Kashmir. And, (iii) We say, the fact that the separatist Kashmiris are Muslims adds its might to the torture they suffer. The Kashmiri who does not want to be in India is a Muslim, an anti-Indian subversive, and a Pakistani agent, is the series of ideas that defines common Indian attitude towards the political movement going on in Kashmir, and the attitude of armed forces personnel is no different.

This degree of torture, naturally, frequently leads to deaths in custody. As we have said, in its recent publication institute of Kashmir Studies has given a general estimate that about 2000 persons would have died in custodial killings in the last seven years. They have recorded 130 such suspected custodial killings in came to power. Our team investigated three specific allegations of custodial killings, of which details of one case of Imtiaz Ahmed Warn, have been given in the earlier section where we were speaking of the nexus between the Forces and the Sarkari (Indian Government sponsored) militants.

We give below the facts our team could gather about the other two killings. The facts were gathered by visiting the village in question and talking to the victims family as well as other local people.

(Courtesy Kashmir Mirror Islamabad Vol 2-5 December, 1997 - January, 1998).

PRESS COVERAGE OF HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATIONS (January 1997 to February 1998)

Despite imposition of restrictions hundreds of gruesome stories, reports and news of human rights violations narrated/despatched by reliable sources such as correspondents’ representatives of BBC, VGA, VOG and PTV in Srinagar/Delhi have leaked out and have been printed. Moreover the reports of Indian Human Rights organizations are being carried,, not only by International press and electronic media, but sometimes also by Indian and occupied Kashmir press.

Extracts of some such stories and reports are given below:

Ghulam Nabi Khayal said in his report, in daily “The Nation” 11 August, 1997, “Indian forces deployed in Kashmir seem to have chosen the Kashmiri women as their target to harass them m any manner they can. The reports of Kashmiri women and girls being arrested, tortured and molested are coming in from all parts of the Indian occupied Valley. There is hardly a single day when the local newspapers go without reporting these human rights violations”.
In Doru near Sop ore, heads of three women were forcibly shaved off by the occupant forces on 8 September, 1997 in presence of hundreds of people including their family members who could not save them from being victimized at the hands of Indian soldiers. “Doru incident” which according to daily “The Nation” 19-11 September 1997 compelled Pakistan government to say” We once again call upon the government of India to cease from violating the Human rights of the Kashmiri people”. The Prime Minister of Azad Jammu & Kashmir Barrister Sultan Mehmood Choudhry “appealed to the United Nations and the International human rights organizations” to take serious notice of the grave human rights violations in the Indian held Kashmir

LICENSE TO SHOOT & KILL

Daily “Dawn” 8 October, 1997 referring AFP has reported that authorities in occupied Kashmir on 7 October, 1997 gave troops, “shoot on sight” powers in the so called disturbed areas. Under the garb of such laxity in law, the Indian occupying Forces are executing the innocent people at will.
Daily “The Nation” of 14 October, 1997 referring APP as source writes that
It was reported in Srinagar on 13 October, 1997 that 350 young men were missing in military custody. Their relatives were being kept in dark as to whether these detainees were alive or were killed in custody.
Freedom House, a New York- based nonprofit organization on 19th December, 1997 described Indian occupied Kashmir as being a ‘Worst of the Worst” case scenario in repression
In its annual report the Freedom House”, (established by Eleanor Roosevelt and Wendell Wilde in 1941, for the promotion of liberty and democracy), characterized the Kashmiri territory under Indian occupation as being “Worst of the Worst” where basic human and political rights were denied to the people. Daily “Dawn” 22 December, 1997 reported.
Ghulam Nabi Khayal in his .report that appeared in daily “The Nation” on 29 December 1997, states

“Thousands of young men were killed in held Jammu and Kashmir State during 1997 mostly in Kashmir Valley’s rural areas”.

The Hurriyat Conference said that during 1997 about 600 youth were killed in custody and this was the largest number of custodial killings since 1990

Radio Srinagar broadcast itself confirmed that “at least” four to six people were arrested on an average every day

The Indian Occupying Forces could not totally ignore the factual position and therefore accepted that every day arrests do take place

In all, about 60,000 people have been killed and scores maimed during the last eight years

According to a report of Kashmir Media Service that appeared in daily ‘The Nation” on 31st December, 1997 the brother in law of Farooq Abdullah, and former chief minister of occupied Kashmir G.M. Shah said that 3,500 people were killed in custody in the Occupied Kashmir by Indian troops during 14 months of Farooq Abdullah’s regime. Addressing a news conference in Srinagar he said the Indian troops were engaged in a genocide operation in the Occupied Kashmir and more than 62,000 Kashmiris have been killed in the past eight years. He said the forth-coming Lok Sabha elections in Occupied Kashmir would be as fraudulent as all the previous polls. He said Kashmir issue could not be settled by brute force alone and political gimmicks, but through substantial and meaningful talks.

ARSON

800 years old Shrine of Shah-e-Hamdan was set on fire by Indian soldiers and agents at Tral town located in south Kashmir on 16th October, 1997 in order to finish the signs of Muslim culture from the held state.

Other cases of organized arson, a common every day happening, is used as tactics to intimidate and demoralize the poor and the innocent people of the wailing Vale. The figure runs into tens of thousand houses, shops and shrines. At least 25403 cases in prominent towns have been physically counted and confirmed on ground.

EXTRA - JUDICIAL KILLINGS

According to a report carried out by daily “The News” 4th January, 1998 the creation of an Indian- puppet regime in occupied Kashmir “did not translate into improved human rights conditions” says the Washington based Human Rights Watch report, issued in December 1997

The report said a fact finding mission “documented a large number of extra -judicial executions that had occurred in the year since Farooq Abdullah’s government took power”.

The report quoted examples of killings by the Special Operation Group (SOG) and cited the collaboration of Indian sponsored terrorist units in such operations. The report said Indian human rights groups also documented increase in reports of rape by Indian troops. The report added that civilians continue to be victims of Indian military operations. Such operations result in “many of the worst abuses as central forces engage in extra-judicial executions and torture”.

The report pointed out that the Indian installed government in occupied Kashmir had set up a human rights commission but it refused to make public its findings despite requests by Human Rights Organizations. The report observed that despite signing various human rights instruments, India has failed to live up to any of its obligations.

LIVING IN HELL

Script given here under, is a report on Kashmir by Indian NGOs. This report is written by Suroosh Irfani and it was carried by daily “The News” 2nd January 1998

“Army bunkers can be seen in every lane and by - lane in Srinagar--- Every where people said they were living in hell”; declares the report of the fact - finding team of three Indian NGOs that visited the Indian - held state of Jammu and Kashmir last summer. Published by the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee based in Hyderabad last November, the report gives first -hand accounts of torture victims picked up by Indian security forces for no other reason than that they “Looked like a militant”. Forcing the victims head into water” sometimes even sewage water, until he nearly chokes to death is one of the milder methods, the report identifies a series of torture methods used against Kashmiris suspected of supporting the freedom struggle. More extreme forms include” burning the legs, thighs and sexual organs, sticking rods up the anus, causing rupture and hemorrhage inside”.

Titled “Civil War and Uncivil Government”, the other two NGOs that compiled the joint report are the Mumbai based Committee for protection of Democratic Rights and People Union for Democratic Rights based in New Delhi.

There are disturbing accounts of women... often entire female members of a family are raped by Indian soldiers and army officers.., the report notes that the police “do not dare to take up investigations of complaints because “they are as scared as everybody else of the charge of aiding and abetting militancy”. Rape by armed forces and destruction of dwellings and property form part of a terror campaign where anyone ~‘can be picked up by the armed forces and just be not heard of afterwards”.

The Report cites three Srinagar professors falling in this category and blows the cover of Delhi’s Kashmir discourse which maintains that since the installation of Farooq Abdullah’s civilian government in October 1996 normalcy was returning to the troubled state. Indeed, the Report notes that during the NGOs teams visit to Jammu and Kashmir “almost every one said that things have become worse after Farooq Abdullah Government took over, or at least they are just as bad as ever”.

There was a sharp rise in killings b~ unidentified groups. The Indian Army sponsored such groups which are responsible for killings ~ most of the people whose death was attributed to “unidentified groups” in the first seven months of Abdullah’s government. Indeed, fear of the armed forces has been compounded by the fear of Indian Army askari militants as the latter “always operate together with and under command of the Indian armed forces.

The report also exposes the Indian media’s complicity in suppressing the truth about Kashmir through self-censorship; the Indian press’ all but ignored’ the press conferences and handouts of the fact finding team highlighting the disturbing truth about Kashmir

While wary of advocating any ‘final solution’ to the Kashmir problem, the Report stresses that “any solution must be grounded on the hopes and aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir”. Coming from the heart of India’s civil society, the report by Indian NGOs is the first convincing evidence that Delhi’s informational hegemony on Kashmir is beginning to crack within India.

Daily “The Nation” 20th February 1998 by referring to its New Delhi correspondent has reported the gory face of state terrorism unleashed by Indian forces in the held Jammu and Kashmir. On 16th February 1998 when India’s former home minister and senior Congress leader Mufti Mohammad Sayeed visited the remote village of Khirhama 20 kilometers away from Southern district of Anantnag, a dreadful picture

The moving account of the natives about their sufferings in the “laboratory of terror” created by the Rashtriya Rifles (RR), a unit of Indian army and the pro-India gunmen, was revealed to Mr. Sayeed, his MIA daughter Mehboobe Mufti and the entourage of media-men. The Kashmir Times, a Jammu based daily, reported that the villagers who thronged around the Congress leader shouted pro-freedom slogans.

The repeated rapes of their women folk by the RR personnel stationed near this village for past over one year has frozen the psyche of the humiliated villagers. The former home minister was told that only last week, a 14 year old girl Jabeena, daughter of a school teacher Gliulam Hassan Parray was allegedly gang raped on the intervening night of 12th and 13th Feb., 1998. Villagers said the RR commander whom they identified as Mr. Sharma accompanied by a group barged into their house. The entire family was pushed out on the Gun point and only Jabeena was directed to remain indoors. She was stripped and raped. Her entire family in the compound heard her screams. The victim’s father and uncle Abdur Rehinan were arrested and later freed after two days. They were found to be physically in critical condition

According to the paper, there were scores -~ of women in the village and almost everyone had her own sob story. Ayesha 28, with her two-month old baby in the lap cried before the visiting politicians. Her husband Mohammad Iqbal, a labourer was arrested on 13th February, 1998. He had not attended the routine “army court”. They (army) are demanding two Lakh rupees, the weeping women told Mufti Sayed.

Rahti an elderly woman of over 80 had her shoulders fractured, because she had intervened when security men were thrashing her sons. She urged the visiting politicians and journalists to save the village from “beasts”. The youth are the most disturbed lot in the village as they hold themselves responsible for not saving their womenfolk from frequent onslought. A young man was quoted by the paper as saying. “Is this the peace they are talking of? We are made to see our sisters and mothers dishonored”.

National progress does not depend upon smoke rising from chimneys, but it relates to decorate it with the ornamental education. To get rid of the society from education producing Clerk and to give current time education to create professional people QAZI BROTHERS in order to get real object has formulated a society named RAMZAN WELFARE SOCIETY, the object of which is only to serve people.