Belgian advocacy group calls for UN probe into Kashmir graves

Kashmir Centre EU asks Ban ki-Moon to send a fact-finding mission to the region.

MIRPUR: The United Nations has been asked to conduct a high-level probe into the recent unearthing of 1,000 unmarked graves in Indian-administered Kashmir by the advisory council of the Belgium-based Kashmir Centre EU and the International Council for Human Development (ICHD).

Ali Raza Syed, who is the president of both the Kashmir Centre EU and the ICHD told The Express Tribune in a telephone interview, that a letter had been sent to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to look into the Amnesty International report about the unmarked graves. Syed said that a Kashmir human rights group had earlier revealed that the graves had been found in a dozen villages in an area known as Uri over a 14-month period.

An Amnesty International statement said, “The grave sites are believed to contain the remains of victims of unlawful killings, enforced disappearances, torture and other abuses which occurred in the context of the military operation persisting in the state since 1989 by the Indian security forces.”

Syed pointed out that in a recent report, the BBC had also confirmed that one of the locations identified by the Kashmir-based rights group, the Association of the Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), is Kichama village, 62 km from Srinagar. The APDP says more than 8,000 people have disappeared in Indian-administered Kashmir over the past two decades.

Syed has demanded that the UN secretary-general send a fact-finding mission to the region for an independent and impartial investigation into the matter. His letter states: “We request His Excellency on behalf of the oppressed people of Jammu and Kashmir, to use his good offices to stop the genocide by Indian forces in Jammu and Kashmir and we want the international community to realise its responsibility to bring an end to the occupation of Kashmir.”

In his letter, Syed also called on Ban to ask India to immediately, in light of UN Security Council resolutions on the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination, put an end to state terrorism, withdraw occupying forces, release all political prisoners and allow Kashmiri expatriate leaders and human-rights groups the freedom to travel in the disputed territory.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 14^th,  2011.