Pakistan reiterates call for probe into IIOJK killings

Says UN must launch an independent investigation into fake encounters by India forces

ISLAMABAD:

Islamabad has reiterated its call for an independent inquiry by international authorities into the extrajudicial killing of three labourers in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).

On July 19, the Indian occupation forces announced that three “terrorists” had been killed in an encounter during a so-called cordon-and-search operation in Amshipora village of Shopian.

However, India last week admitted that the martyred youngsters were actually labourers who had gone to Kashmir from their hometown Rajouri in Jammu, looking for work and that Indian troops killed them in a staged encounter.

"The revelations that weapons were planted on the bodies of the Kashmiri labourers martyred in the IIOJK to make it look as though they were armed fighters in a staged gun battle are only a tip of the iceberg of Indian crimes against the Kashmiri people.

“The list of India’s crimes against the Kashmiri people is long," said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement issued on Tuesday.

The ministry said it had stated in September that the Indian Army had declared the three boys unidentified terrorists in order to cover up their cold-blooded murder and that instead of handing over their bodies to their families and had buried them in a graveyard marked for "foreign terrorists".

“[However,] two months later, the Indian Army admitted that the murder of the three Kashmiris was extrajudicial – a hallmark of Indian occupation forces’ state-terrorism in the IIOJK.

"More than 300 innocent Kashmiris including women and children have been martyred in fake encounters and staged cordon-and-search operations during the last one year," it said.

The ministry said Pakistan has been consistently drawing the international community’s attention towards extrajudicial killings of innocent Kashmiris that the occupation forces are engaged in in order to further perpetuate India’s illegal occupation of the IIOJK.

It said similar findings of extrajudicial killings have been reported by the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in its two Kashmir reports of 2018 and 2019.

"The horrific act of extrajudicial killing of Kashmiri labourers as well as other such acts over the past three decades warranted investigation by a UN Commission of Inquiry, as recommended by the OHCHR, to expose the brutalities of Indian security forces in IIOJK," the statement added.

It said nothing short of an inquiry under international scrutiny would either meet the requirements of justice or be accepted by the Kashmiris. No cover-up exercises can anymore hide India’s crimes and save it from international censure.

"Pakistan reiterates its calls for the international community to hold India accountable for its crimes against the Kashmiri people and work for resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people," it said.