ISLAMABAD: According to official figures released in Jammu and Kashmir assembly, there were 3,400 disappearance cases and the conflict has left more than 47,000 people dead which also includes 7,000 police personnel as of July 2009. Some rights groups claim a higher figure of 100,000 deaths since 1989.
In the past several months, Kashmir has lived through yet another apocalypse. Casting aside all norms of humanity, Indian occupation forces have killed hundreds, mass blinded hundreds, and grievously injured thousands.
Women have been raped and dishonoured; men are picked up for for incarceration without charges, without trial. Torture and extrajudicial killings are rampant. Kashmir is a prison. People in their own land are being frisked, persecuted, brutalized, killed, and used as human shields. Children have not been spared. Men disappear; half widows wait for ever.
Several deaths, blindings and thousands injuries are directly attributable to the use of 12 gauge shotguns firing pellet guns. Mass blindings have been used for the first time on this scale as an instrument of war.
India is writing a text book on gross and consistent violations of human rights anywhere in the world.
Since 1947, half a million Kashmiri Muslims have been massacred by the Indian occupation forces. These are unconscionable human rights violations; these are crimes against humanity; this is genocide.
And the irony of our times is nobody has come to the rescue of the Kashmiris, the victim; and an even a bigger irony is that many powerful nations are siding with the victimizer, India.
Kashmir is no more an issue or a dispute – it is a movement for azaadi, for self-determination which has morphed into a creed because now Kashmiris say Azaadi is part of their DNA.
