Imran Yaqub Dhillon
New York
A United Nations human rights expert has offered help to India in investigating the mass graves found in Indian occupied Kashmir, after a Pakistani delegate asked her in a UN panel if she would undertake the task. This is in light of report that thousands of Kashmiris have been killed by Indian occupation forces in staged encounters.
Responding to the query from Qasim Aziz Butt, a second secretary in the Pakistan Mission to the UN, the Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Anges Callamard, said that she stands ready to assist the Indian government in conducting the probe into the unmarked graves whenever New Delhi extended her an invitation.
She welcomed the question from the Pakistani delegate, saying such an investigation could help the families of the victims get justice.
Ms. Callamard was speaking during an Interactive Dialogue in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which deals with social, cultural and humanitarian issues.
Before the committee is the Rapporteur’s annual report in which she, in general terms, called for more action to protect mass graves, which provide proof of “heinous events” that must never be forgotten.
In her response to the Pakistani delegate, she also noted that besides her mandated area of work — extrajudicial killings — multiple other Special Rapporteurs and Mandate Holders, as well as the High Commissioner on Human Rights, have expressed repeatedly expressed concerns about the broader human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir that she called “extraordinary”. In this regard, she noted that the first step would be to “acknowledge” the problem and then address it appropriately.
Earlier, Qasim Aziz Butt, the Pakistani delegate, also said that the phenomenon of mass graves was predominantly associated with extra-judicial killings in situations of armed conflict, foreign occupation, massive human rights violations, and other atrocity crimes. “We remains concerned about sites of mass graves in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir,” he said.
