The gravity, scale and nature of human rights abuses in India-occupied Kashmir (IOK) know no parallel. Kashmiris are being subjected by the occupation forces to a range of abuses like mass killings, detentions, enforced disappearances, intimidation, rape, torture and suppression of freedom of speech. The Public Safety Act of 1978 is one repressive tool that is liberally used in the occupied Muslim-majority state in a vain bid to quell the freedom struggle. The act formulated vaguely on purpose has been in force in the occupied region for 41 years, and allows for detention of up to two years without charge or trial on the purported presumption that they may in the future commit acts harmful to the state.
In the name of public safety, innocent civilians — be they children, old people or disabled — are treated to torture of inhumane proportions under what is described as a ‘lawless law’ in a latest report by the Amnesty International. The rights group has based its report on the analysis of 210 cases of detention under the draconian act between 2012 and 2018. The report says that of the mentioned cases, 71 feature revolving-door detentions, in which authorities kept on issuing orders to keep people behind bars i.e. when it is anticipated that detainees will be released on bail, the public safety act is used to ensure their continued detention. Such is the height of lawlessness that a Kashmiri leader, Masarat Alam Bhat, has been detained for a cumulative period of 20 years since 1990, despite never being charged with a crime, according to the report.
The Amnesty calls upon the Indian government to immediate repeal the act, warning that “it is contributing to inflaming tensions between the state authorities and local populace”. The warning has, however, fallen on deaf ear, just like in the case of the July 2018 report by the UN Human Rights Office.
Published in The Express Tribune, June 14th, 2019.
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