WikiLeaks torture cables no surprise: Kashmiri separatists

Kashmiri leaders say reports of torture by security forces in Indian-held Kashmir comes as no surprise.

SRINAGAR: Separatists in Indian Kashmir said Saturday reports in leaked US diplomatic cables that security forces used torture in the disputed Himalayan region came as no surprise.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) provided US diplomats in 2005 with evidence of systematic use of torture by Indian security forces in Kashmir, the cables released by WikiLeaks said.

"There was nothing new. I, too, was subjected to third-degree torture in jails," said Kashmiri leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani.

"Indian forces have been resorting to inhuman and brutal torture to crush  people for the past 20 years", when an armed revolt against New Delhi's rule began, said Geelani, who supports Kashmir's union with Pakistan.

The head of the pro-independence Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, Yasin Malik, said the bodies of Kashmiris bore "witness to the brutal torture most of my colleagues, including myself, were subjected to."

The ICRC told US diplomats of 177 visits it made to detention centres in Indian Kashmir that revealed "stable trend lines" of prisoner abuses. Techniques included electric shocks, sexual and water torture and the incidents always occurred in the presence of an officer.

The ICRC, which met nearly 1,500 detainees, stressed few were militants. The vast majority were civilians "connected to or believed to have information about the insurgency".

The ICRC said it was "forced to conclude the (Indian government) condones torture", but added the situation had improved from the 1990s, according to the cables.

Human rights groups have repeatedly accused India of abuses in Muslim-majority Kashmir.

Kashmir's chief priest and chairman of the region's moderate separatist grouping, Mirwaiz Umer Farooq, said the leaks vindicated complaints about torture in Kashmir's jails.

"We've been telling the world for the past 20 years about gross rights violations but the world has been indifferent," he said.

Militant violence in Indian Kashmir has eased since nuclear-armed India and Pakistan launched a peace process in 2004 over the disputed region.

But popular pro-independence protests since June have left over 110 protesters and bystanders dead, many of them teenagers.

India and Pakistan each hold part of Kashmir but claim it in full.

The state's chief minister Omar Abdullah said the US report dated from 2005 when he was not in power and no torture was going on "under his watch."

However, opposition Peoples Democratic Party leader Mehbooba Mufti said Abdullah "should be last man to speak on the issue" with the number of civilian deaths that have occurred in the past few months at the hands of security forces.