Geneva: A group of UN rights experts urged India to address the “alarming human rights situation” in Kashmir since it stripped its autonomy a year ago on Wednesday.
The independent experts, who do not speak for the United Nations but report their findings to it, called on other nations to pile the pressure on India if it does not do so.
“Urgent action is needed,” the 18 special rapporteurs and other experts said Tuesday in a joint statement.
“If India will not take any genuine and immediate steps to resolve the situation, meet their obligations to investigate historic and recent cases of human rights violations and prevent future violations, then the international community should step up,” they said.
Since the Indian Parliament revoked the constitutionally mandated status of the state of Jammu and Kashmir on 5 August 2019, the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir has been in free fall, the experts said.
“We are particularly concerned that during the COVID-19 pandemic, many protestors are still in detention and internet restrictions remain in place,” said the statement.
The statement added that it has been almost a year since several UN experts wrote to the Government of India and publicly called on India to end the crackdown on freedom of expression, access to information and peaceful protests which followed the 5 August 2019 announcement.
“The experts have also raised concerns with the Indian government about alleged arbitrary detention and torture and ill-treatment to which the Government recently replied, as well as the criminalization of journalists covering the situation and the detention and deteriorating health of a high profile human rights lawyer,” it added.
“We have yet to receive any reply to three of the four letters,” the experts said.
“The October 2019 closure of the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission, which had been one of the few ways victims of human rights violations could seek remedy, is particularly concerning. Furthermore, no information was provided to the public about what would happen to the ongoing cases the body had been investigating, including hundreds of suspected enforced disappearances dating from as far back as 1989. Allegations regarding thousands of unmarked and some mass graves sites have also not yet been properly investigated,” it added.
“Decades on, families are still waiting in anguish and now there is a stream of new alleged rights violations,” the experts said. “With no State Human Rights Commission and internet restrictions, the avenues for reporting are further reduced,” it further added.

KR Desk