In Geneva, speakers have expressed their concern over the continued illegal detention of Kashmiri political detainees languishing in different jails of India and Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
The speakers addressing a seminar ‘Plight of Kashmir prisoners’ held on the sidelines of the 53rd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, said that thousands of detainees lodged in different jails were getting worse with every passing day.
They said that thousands of Kashmiris who were arrested before and after 5th August 2019 have been languishing in India’s notorious jails like Tihar, which has become a death trap for Kashmiris.
They said that a sizable number of Kashmiris who were taken into preventive custody on 5th Au-gust 2019 continue to rot in Amphala, Udhampur, Hiranagar, Kathua and Kot Bhalwal jails. The speakers said the Indian government has given a free licence to its forces and agencies like National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Enforcement Di-rectorate to arrest Kashmiris. They said dozens of top rank political leaders, including Muhammad Yasin Malik, Musarat Aalam Butt, Shabbir Ahmad Shah, Nayeem Ahmed Khan and Aasiya Andrabi were picked up from their homes and whisked off to prisons outside the valley.
“They have been actually abducted by NIA and ED and shifted to New Delhi’s Tihar jail under frivolous and concocted charges,” the speakers said, adding that scores of detainees including Dr. Qasim Fakhtoo, Dr Shafi Shariati, Ghulam Qadir and many more were rotting in jails serving life terms.
The speakers, while referring to conviction of prominent Kashmiri leader Muhammad Yasin Malik, said that Malik’s conviction in a manifestly dubious and politically motivated case filed by the Indian National Investigation Agency, amply demonstrates how the Modi government was using judiciary as a weapon to silence legitimate Kashmiri voices.
Referring to India’s history of using the judiciary and other state apparatus to suppress the political and democratic dissent in the occupied territory, the speakers said that India, which had deprived Malik of his fundamental right to defend himself in the court of law after implicating him in a concocted case, was now hell bent on eliminating him by using its judiciary.
Raising their concerns over the Indian investiga-tion agency’s bid to seek the death penalty for Yasin Malik, the speakers said that the NIA’s malicious intention poses a grave threat to the life of Mr. Malik who has been leading a nonviolent movement, advocating for the peaceful resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute.
They said that it was quite astonishing to note that the JKLF chief and other Kashmiri leaders were being penalised just for raising their voice for the voiceless Kashmiris.
They said that the Modi’s double-edged on-slaught against Kashmiris was aimed at whipping up anti-Muslim sentiments, polarise people and win votes. They said that the Hindu nationalist party-BJP-which played communal card to stoke hatred between the people to win elections was now using the same tactics to save its vote bank. They said that there were ample evidence which suggests that the Modi led apartheid regime, which thrives on communal divide and anti-Muslim sentiment, could use the unlawful execution of the Kashmiri leader Yasin Malik as a means to regain popularity and to bolster chances of retaining power in the upcoming Parliamentary Elections being held in 2024.
The speakers appealed to the UN secretary gen-eral to take swift and decisive action by demanding the Indian government to stop using its judiciary as a weapon to punish Kashmiri leaders who have been waging a peaceful struggle to achieve the funda-mental rights guaranteed to Kashmiris by no less an authority than the United Nations.
They said that India being a signatory to the Geneva Convention on political prisoners was bound to respect the rights of prisoners.
They said it was high time that the world human rights bodies should mount pressure on India to release all illegally detained prisoners.
The seminar was attended and addressed by po-litical activists, parliamentarians, public representa-tives, law experts and human rights defenders hailing from different parts of the world including Altaf Hussain Wani, Chairman of Kashmir institute of international relations, Faheem Kayani, Hassan ul Bana, Mirza Asif Jarral and others.—KMS
