IOJ&K situation getting grimmer, UN envoy told

Pakistan has apprised the UN Human Rights Council of the plight of children in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJ&K), which are under a tight lockdown for the last 10 months and called on New Delhi to end its atrocities against them.

Participating in an interactive dialogue with the UN Secretary General’s Special Representative on Violence Against Children, Maalla M’jid, in the 47-member council in Geneva, Pakistan Ambassador at the UN in Geneva Khalil Hashmi said that conditions were deteriorating in the occupied territory.

“Militarily cooped up in their homes under the suffocating ‘double’ lockdown, over 1.5 million Kashmiri children have endured the worst form of violence which the contemporary world has yet to witness,” Ambassador Khalil Hashmi said.

He recalled that in August last year, renowned medical magazine “Lancet” had alerted the world community that in the wake of India’s heavy militarisation of the occupied territory, the mental health crisis there would only worsen disproportionately, affecting women and children.

“Nearly a year later, the situation seems even grimmer,” the Pakistani envoy said. “From forced abduction during night raids to torture, from restricted access to medical help to no recourse to virtual educational facilities, from extrajudicial killing to sustaining permanent disabilities from pellets, Indian brutality against hapless Kashmiri children knows no bound,” he added.

He said the recent image of a 3-year-old Kashmiri boy, crying and sitting on the body of his grandfather, who was executed by Indian occupation forces, summed up India’s state-sanctioned terrorisation of Kashmiri children, and life-long impact of such terror on their mental health.

“We urge the Special Representative to remain seized with the situation of the Kashmiri children in the occupied territory, and call on India to halt its grave atrocities against them, in compliance with its obligations under international human rights and humanitarian laws.”