The dossier – a reality check ahead of UNGA
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be sharing with the world his government’s achievements on the domestic front at the United Nations General Assembly on September 25.
But all his sweet talk of the “Incredible India” would be simply an eyewash to cover up the stench of the heinous crimes committed by the ruling junta against the minorities and in particular the Kashmiri Muslims.
The Indian premier, backed by the extremist RSS and a staunch Hindutva approach, however, would have to do a lot more, as things are heating up back home; where politically motivated prosecutions, harassment, online trolling, and even lynching of opponents is now a norm.
The situation for Modi has become a bit more difficult as days before his address Pakistan unveiled an incriminating piece of evidence; laying bare gross, systematic, and widespread human rights violations perpetrated by the 900,000 Indian occupation forces in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).
The comprehensive dossier released by Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi and National Security Adviser Moeed Yusuf on September 12, shared with the world evidence of events that constitute war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide under international law.
The 131-page dossier covered separate chapters on war crimes committed by the Indian army, the indigenous Kashmiri freedom movement and India’s false flag operations, and, how the United Nations Security Council resolutions and international law were being violated through an orchestrated effort to bring about a demographic change in the occupied territory.
The document pointed that the human rights situation in IIOJK further deteriorated after August 5, 2019
Jammu and Kashmir remains one of the oldest unresolved disputes on the agenda of the UN Security Council and for the past seven decades, India has resorted to ruthless oppression, committing grave human rights violations with impunity against the Kashmiris.
The office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), in its two dedicated reports on the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir in 2018 and 2019 expressed concerns about the excessive use of force, including the use of pellet-firing shotguns, detention of Kashmiris political leadership, curbs on freedom of religion and belief, movement, peaceful assembly, and restrictions on the rights to health, education, and freedom of expression.
Several UN Special Rapporteurs have termed the overall human rights situation in IIOJK a “free fall” and categorised the communications blockade and curfew as “a form of collective punishment of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, without even a pretext of a precipitating offence”.
The most damning part of the report are details of War Crimes; based on testimonies of victims and several independent investigation reports by human rights organisations, civil society, and the media.
The dossier covers accounts of 3,432 cases of war crimes perpetrated by senior officers of the Indian occupation forces. The crimes catalogued in the dossier are corroborated by audio and video evidence that has been meticulously collected over time.
The dossier records that since 1989, there have been over 96,000 extrajudicial killings, around 162,000 cases of arbitrary arrests and torture, and over 25,000 pellet gun injuries. Moreover, 11,250 women were raped, around 23,000 widowed and over 108,000 children orphaned.
The long list o