Posts Tagged ‘Jammu & Kashmir’

Release All Kashmiri Muslim Serving Life Sentences in Various Jails in the Subcontinent

Posted: April 24, 2013 in Armed Forces Special Power Act, Conflict and Peace, Human Rights, Public Security Act, Right to Dissent, State Violence
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No to Political Vendetta!  

Release Dr. Muhammad Qasim Faktoo immediately!

No to Political Vendetta! Release Dr. Muhammad Qasim Faktoo immediately!<br /> Release All Kashmiri Muslim Serving Life Sentences in<br /> Various Jails in the Subcontinent!<br /> 23/04/2013<br /> Dr. Muhammad Qasim: The Victim of Political Vendetta is a compilation of the case documents of Dr. Muhammad Qasim and articles written by various intellectuals and prominent citizens demanding an end to the 20 year long of his incarceration. At the occasion of the book release, CRPP would invite your attention to the long list of Kashmiri Muslims undergoing life imprisonment —around 45—in various jails such as Srinagar, Jammu, Udhampur, Tihar, Mumbai, Gujarat, Nagpur etc. At the outset it is a case of gross injustice reeking of political vendetta on Dr. Muhammad Qasim Faktoo who has spent twenty years of his life in prison. It is important to briefly look into the case of Dr. Muhammad Qasim to make sense of how political convictions, of being a Kashmiri Muslim sharing the political aspirations of the Kashmiri people for their right to self-determination itself is enough to earn the ire of the political establishment.<br /> Dr. Muhammad Qasim was arrested on 5 February 1993 for his political views and to prolong his incarceration was booked under Sec.3 TADA, and Sec 302 read with 120-B CrPC. On 14 July 2001 the TADA Court in Jammu acquitted him citing that the prosecution had miserably failed to prove the case against Dr. Muhammad Qasim and the other accused. As the State of Jammu & Kashmir challenged the acquittal before the Supreme Court of India Dr. Muhammad Qasim was sentenced to life based solely on a confession statement made under section 15 of TADA. Even when the SC sentenced him to life it was mentioned that the “accused shall be given benefit of the period already undergone (undertrial period) by them”. After the completion of 14 years, the J & K High Court directed the Jail authorities to place Dr. Qasim’s case before the Review Board for consideration keeping in spirit with the observations of the SC. The Review Board recommended his premature release on 3 June 2008. Contrary to the recommendations of the Review Board the vindictive J & K government brought in the interpretation that the J & K Jail Manual Rule 54.1 debars TADA lifer convicts from release on completion of two thirds (14 years) of 20 years. (Govt. order No. Home-773(P) of 2009 dated 14.09.2009)<br /> Amidst conflicting opinions in the High Court between a single bench judge which initially quashed the government order while a double bench upheld it taking refuge in the Rule 54.1 of the Jail Manual the long arm of political vendetta stood in between a forthright consideration of the outstanding situation and the release of Dr. Muhammad Qasim. On 31 May 2012, Dr. Muhammad Qasim completed 20 years of incarceration. It has been held unequivocally that despite the correspondence of Sec. 401 and 402 of the State Code of Criminal Procedure to Sections 432 and 433 of the Central Code the power of the executive is absolute and unfettered to remit sentence though it was willingly elusive in Dr. Muhammad Qasim’s case. As Dr. Muhammad Qasim has been sentenced to life under the J& K Manual which had made him ineligible to avail the provision of release after 14 years of imprisonment, then it logically follows that the same manual provides for putting a final end to his incarceration after the completion of 20 years. Without doubt what makes matters worse in Jammu & Kashmir is the overwhelming sense of vendetta vis-a-vis political prisoners.<br /> The Indian State in the subcontinent and its counterpart in Jammu & Kashmir in particular have deliberately evaded the challenging question of evolving jurisprudence consistent with the question of political offences or offences the state deems are against the will of the State. The courts’ disquiet in developing jurisprudence towards dealing with political offences that are not borne out of individual interest of the alleged offender but of collective interest has resulted in adhocism and arbitrariness taking precedence over a possible judicial remedy in the ordinary law consistent with the already established precedence in international law. Perhaps for the first time the Calcutta High Court (CRR 463 of 2012 With CRR 1312 of 2012 With CRR 4000 of 211 on 8 August 2012) while recognising the right of the Maoist prisoners to be treated as Political Prisoners have brought in the question of the need to develop jurisprudence in dealing with political offences albeit the judgement confining its purview only till the rights of the political prisoner in the prison. Notwithstanding the fact that the above said judgment was based on the West Bengal Correctional Services Act 1992 and though there is yet to be a statutory recognition to political prisoners in Jammu & Kashmir, the Indian State has practically, to some extent, acknowledged the difference between political prisoners and other offenders. Since 1995 India allowed International Committee of Red Cross to visit these prisoners and ascertain their conditions within jails (though the distinction however remained confined to recognized jails and not detention centres like interrogation centres and police stations where the brutalities are perpetrated). CRPP is of the opinion that the need of the hour is to expand the ambit of the distinction of political prisoners from the domain of treatment of prisoners to the jurisprudence of conviction and penology.<br /> Only in such a scenario can there be some safeguards, if not all, given the nature of the Indian State, to deal with such prolonged incarceration of prisoners for their political beliefs. Dr. Muhammad Qasim has undergone twenty years of incarceration. There are many more who might face the same fate if the democratic and freedom loving people of the subcontinent raise their voice against such inhuman and beastly face of the so-called democracy of the Indian State and its judiciary and executive. As in the case of Dr. Muhammad Qasim we need to demand the release of many of the 45 odd political prisoners serving life sentence in various prisons in the subcontinent. The list of the names many of these prisoners are provided as annexe though it is not an exhaustive one.<br /> Putting Dr. Muhammad Qasim further behind bars goes against the very grain of all civil and political rights and freedoms assured by the Constitution of India as well as the International Law. The prolonged incarceration of Dr. Muhammad Qasim is testimony to the continuing repression and trampling of all freedoms of the people of Jammu & Kashmir for their political aspirations. As the State use every draconian law within its reach to the maximum (in Dr. Muhammad Qasim’s case the J & K Jail Manual, read with TADA) thousands of Kashmiri Muslims are kept behind bars in various prisons while hundreds languish in undisclosed torture and detention centres. CRPP appeals to every democratic and progressive sections in the subcontinent to raise their voice for the immediate release of Dr. Muhammad Qasim and his co-accused irrespective of his political convictions/beliefs as well as all the lifers most of whom have already finished ten years or more of the sentence.<br /> Brief report about the proceedings of the Book Release Function: The book on Dr. Muhammad Qasmi was released at the Deputy Chairman Hall, Constitution Club, New Delhi jointly by Prof Jagmohan ( nephew of Shaheed Bhagat Singh) and Jeetan Marandi (people’s balladeer who got acquitted by the HC of Jharkhand from death sentence in a framed up case). Prof. Jagmohan in his address after the book release talked about the spirit that Jeetan had given to all of us after a prolonged people’s movement all over the subcontinent for his release. Both the speakers said it is a great victory for the people. Prof. Jagmohan pointed out that Bhagat Singh’s well known slogan of anti imperialism and revolution that he framed in 1917 correctly captured the dialectical relation between the two. Only the correct synthesis of this understanding can save us from these trying times of the growing fangs of fascist assault on the people on all fronts—socio-cultural, politico-economic. Besides he also talked about the need to take cue from the arduous struggle for the release of Jeetan Marandi that gives us strength and hope towards making it possible the release of all political prisoners including Dr. Muhammad Qasim. Thus while referring to the case of more than 40 odd lifers in J&K Prof. Jagmohan stressed the fact that when it comes to a political prisoner the system would always look for the convenient option ensuring that the notion of life imprisonment be for the entire natural life of the political prisoner and hence it becomes important that we demand for the release of all Kashmiri Muslim lifers lodged in different jails and have served around ten years in prison lest they be targets of political vendetta. It is important such books documenting the case and struggle for the release of political prisoners like Dr. Muhammad Qasim be taken to the wider sections of the people. This book release is a welcome step in that direction.<br /> Jeetan Marandi while talking about his torturous experience on death row reminisced how his life from childhood facing abject poverty and forced to discontinue his school after 3rd division had to fight every moment to make his life worth living as a human being. The discerning mind of young Jeetan soon got attracted to the cultural group which used to visit villages and sing songs and act plays that depicted the everyday life of the villagers and the problems they faced. Soon Jeetan’s worldview transforms as he finds purpose in being part of the group and thus also being part of people’s initiatives to do away with their miseries. Sooner than later had he started singing for the people and their rights than he naturally became the target of state repression. In that context he identifies himself with the incarceration of Dr. Muhammad Qasim. The emotional and moving narrative of Jeetan proved beyond doubt how the struggle to keep one alive in the dungeons is as well the larger struggle to do away with all forms of oppression. He spoke about the need to dream even in adverse times and talk to oneself about the need to not give up hope even for a moment. To fight every minute, moment to keep the star beneath ones breast alive. The prisoner defines himself as well as the world around him in these moments of struggle to stay alive and that is what makes him and his convictions a cherishable dream. A dream worth dreaming in the isolated cell. In a dark cell (anda cell) where there is only some semblance of light at 12 noon every mosquito that sucks your blood, every lizard that creeps across, the spider and its cobweb, everything becomes your friend, as you struggle to make sense out such senseless creatures, meaning out of the life in isolation as you keep watching the lizard eat the insect for hours together. It is the desire to live even in that lifeless world that makes the political prisoner and his struggle inside the confines of the prisons a fight to keep one’s finest sensibilities alive and it the same that the mindless and violent state want him to lose forever. Jeetan feels that in this struggle always the news from outside of people protesting for his release, rallies and public meetings demanding his unconditional release all gave him hope and a strong faith in the strength of the people. And it is this united strength of the people and their struggle that can ensure that the terrible injustice of the kind of incarceration that Dr. Muhammad Qasim and his co-accused is going through can be done away with. The release of all such political prisoners in the subcontinent becomes the need of the hour as part of struggle to humanise ourselves.<br /> Zahid a Kashmiri scholar talked about the need for a united struggle of the people of the subcontinent though their causes are different to defeat the designs of the Indian State to suppress all forms of political dissent. The political prisoners committee can be the right platform to realise that unity.<br /> Prof. SAR Geelani, President CRPP, while presiding over the programme stressed the need for the struggle to unite for the release of all political prisoners in the subcontinent. There are thousands of Kashmiri political prisoners lodged in different jails in the Indian subcontinent though in the present programme we are raising only the case of life convicts in the context of Kashmir (more than 40 of them with many having completed more than 10 years)with specific reference to the continuing incarceration of Dr. Muhammad Qasim. The platform of CRPP is a definite step in the direction towards all forces fighting for the unconditional release of all political prisoners. While pointing out that the rights of the political prisoners has well been recognised in the international law he stressed that it is our duty to struggle to make the Indian State accept the category of political prisoners and their rights. </p> <p>In Solidarity,</p> <p>SAR Geelani Amit Bhattacharyya Prof. Jagmohan Singh<br /> President Secretary General Vice President</p> <p>Jeetan Marandi Rona Wilson<br /> Secretary Secretary, Public Relations </p> <p>List of Kashmiri Muslims Serving Life Sentence<br /> 1. AB Rashid, Udhampor was awarded Death but now changed into Life, Jammu District Amphala Jail<br /> 2. Aashiq Hussain Faktoo alias Dr Muhammad Qasim Faktoo Srinager Jail.<br /> 3. Ghulam Qadir Butt R/O Dooru Mir Maidan, Islamabad in Khutwa Jail now in Srinagar Jail.<br /> 4. Muhammad Ayoub Mir, Sadrabal Kot Bulwal Jail Jammu<br /> 5. Muhammad Ayoub Dar, Rawal Pora, Srinagar presently in Srinagar Jail, Life sentence by TADA court Jammu in 2009<br /> 6. Iqbal Jan, Bandipora Srinagar Jail<br /> 7. Mustaq Kaloo, Sopore co-accused with Iqbal Jan, Tihar jail, New Delhi<br /> 8. Mohammad Amin Wani, Banihal<br /> 9. Mehmood Toopiwal, Kangan<br /> 10. Abdul Waheed Thachi, Banihal<br /> 11. Jafar Umar Khanto<br /> 12. Javeed Khan, Nowpora, Srinagar Tihar Jai s/o M Shafi Khan Nowpora Srinagar 517-96 Lajpath Nagar Blast<br /> 13. M Shafi Khan @Prof Shafi Sharyati Hariwanun Khansahab in Sgr Jail.<br /> 14. Noor Muhammad Tantry, Tral, earlier in Tihar, now in Srinagar<br /> 15. Feroz Ahmad, Budgam Beerwa<br /> 16. Sh Raeis Delhi Tihar<br /> 17. Ishaq Pala s/o GH Rasool Tariq Shiekh, Manihal Shopian<br /> 18. Shabir Ahmad s/o M Abdullah Butt, Handwara Maratham<br /> 19. Mustaq Malik s/o Gh Muhammad Shah, Gund Handwara<br /> 20. Gh Muhammad Butt s/o Noor Muhammad Butt Koker Bagh Khag<br /> 21. Ab Hamid Teeli s/o GH Hasan Kokerhama, Kulgam<br /> 22. Nazir A Shiekh s/o Ab Rashid Batamaloo<br /> 23. Showkat A Khan Chotabazar present Nishat<br /> 24. Zakir Hussain alias Umar Faoorq, son of Ali Mohd of Malhar,<br /> 25. Fayaz Ahmad Shah of Babnad Shopian and Muhammad Syed Bhat of Dirhama Bijbehara.<br /> 26. Samiulla Sheikh R/O Patan Baramulla<br /> 27. Ghulam Nabi Soura, Srinagar, Kashmir Central Jail, Srinagar<br /> 28. Amin Dar Banihal, Jammu, Jammu Jail<br /> 29. Barkat Hussain S/O Neik Muhammad Pulwama, Kashmir Jammu Jail<br /> 30. Farooq Ahmad, Central Jail, Nagpur<br /> 31. Farooq Chopan, Central Jail, Mumbai<br /> 32. G. MuhammadWani, Jammu Jail<br /> 33. G. Qadir Butt Kupwara, Kashmir, Sub Jail, Kathua<br /> 34. Lala Hussain, Jammu Jail<br /> 35. Muhammad Akram Butt<br /> 36. Muhammad Aslam S/O Kamal Din, Jammu Jail<br /> 37. Muhammad Latif S/O Wali Muhammad, Jammu Jail<br /> 38. Muhammad Shafi S/O Abdal Karim, Jammu Jail<br /> 39. Muhammad Hussain R/ O Hadmat, Jammu Jail<br /> 40. Muhammad Shafi S/O Mohammad Abdullah, Jammu Jail<br /> 41. Muhammad Yousuf S/O Fetha Muhammad, Jammu Jail</p> <p>COMMITTEE FOR THE RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS<br /> 185/3, FOURTH FLOOR, ZAKIR NAGAR, NEW DELHI-110025″ src=”<a href=https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/s480x480/298081_499874660078758_2062897286_n.jpg&#8221; />

23/04/2013
Dr. Muhammad Qasim: The Victim of Political Vendetta is a compilation of the case documents of Dr. Muhammad Qasim and articles written by various intellectuals and prominent citizens demanding an end to the 20 year long of his incarceration. At the occasion of the book release, CRPP would invite your attention to the long list of Kashmiri Muslims undergoing life imprisonment —around 45—in various jails such as Srinagar, Jammu, Udhampur, Tihar, Mumbai, Gujarat, Nagpur etc. At the outset it is a case of gross injustice reeking of political vendetta on Dr. Muhammad Qasim Faktoo who has spent twenty years of his life in prison. It is important to briefly look into the case of Dr. Muhammad Qasim to make sense of how political convictions, of being a Kashmiri Muslim sharing the political aspirations of the Kashmiri people for their right to self-determination itself is enough to earn the ire of the political establishment.
Dr. Muhammad Qasim was arrested on 5 February 1993 for his political views and to prolong his incarceration was booked under Sec.3 TADA, and Sec 302 read with 120-B CrPC. On 14 July 2001 the TADA Court in Jammu acquitted him citing that the prosecution had miserably failed to prove the case against Dr. Muhammad Qasim and the other accused. As the State of Jammu & Kashmir challenged the acquittal before the Supreme Court of India Dr. Muhammad Qasim was sentenced to life based solely on a confession statement made under section 15 of TADA. Even when the SC sentenced him to life it was mentioned that the “accused shall be given benefit of the period already undergone (undertrial period) by them”. After the completion of 14 years, the J & K High Court directed the Jail authorities to place Dr. Qasim’s case before the Review Board for consideration keeping in spirit with the observations of the SC. The Review Board recommended his premature release on 3 June 2008. Contrary to the recommendations of the Review Board the vindictive J & K government brought in the interpretation that the J & K Jail Manual Rule 54.1 debars TADA lifer convicts from release on completion of two thirds (14 years) of 20 years. (Govt. order No. Home-773(P) of 2009 dated 14.09.2009)
Amidst conflicting opinions in the High Court between a single bench judge which initially quashed the government order while a double bench upheld it taking refuge in the Rule 54.1 of the Jail Manual the long arm of political vendetta stood in between a forthright consideration of the outstanding situation and the release of Dr. Muhammad Qasim. On 31 May 2012, Dr. Muhammad Qasim completed 20 years of incarceration. It has been held unequivocally that despite the correspondence of Sec. 401 and 402 of the State Code of Criminal Procedure to Sections 432 and 433 of the Central Code the power of the executive is absolute and unfettered to remit sentence though it was willingly elusive in Dr. Muhammad Qasim’s case. As Dr. Muhammad Qasim has been sentenced to life under the J& K Manual which had made him ineligible to avail the provision of release after 14 years of imprisonment, then it logically follows that the same manual provides for putting a final end to his incarceration after the completion of 20 years. Without doubt what makes matters worse in Jammu & Kashmir is the overwhelming sense of vendetta vis-a-vis political prisoners.
The Indian State in the subcontinent and its counterpart in Jammu & Kashmir in particular have deliberately evaded the challenging question of evolving jurisprudence consistent with the question of political offences or offences the state deems are against the will of the State. The courts’ disquiet in developing jurisprudence towards dealing with political offences that are not borne out of individual interest of the alleged offender but of collective interest has resulted in adhocism and arbitrariness taking precedence over a possible judicial remedy in the ordinary law consistent with the already established precedence in international law. Perhaps for the first time the Calcutta High Court (CRR 463 of 2012 With CRR 1312 of 2012 With CRR 4000 of 211 on 8 August 2012) while recognising the right of the Maoist prisoners to be treated as Political Prisoners have brought in the question of the need to develop jurisprudence in dealing with political offences albeit the judgement confining its purview only till the rights of the political prisoner in the prison. Notwithstanding the fact that the above said judgment was based on the West Bengal Correctional Services Act 1992 and though there is yet to be a statutory recognition to political prisoners in Jammu & Kashmir, the Indian State has practically, to some extent, acknowledged the difference between political prisoners and other offenders. Since 1995 India allowed International Committee of Red Cross to visit these prisoners and ascertain their conditions within jails (though the distinction however remained confined to recognized jails and not detention centres like interrogation centres and police stations where the brutalities are perpetrated). CRPP is of the opinion that the need of the hour is to expand the ambit of the distinction of political prisoners from the domain of treatment of prisoners to the jurisprudence of conviction and penology.
Only in such a scenario can there be some safeguards, if not all, given the nature of the Indian State, to deal with such prolonged incarceration of prisoners for their political beliefs. Dr. Muhammad Qasim has undergone twenty years of incarceration. There are many more who might face the same fate if the democratic and freedom loving people of the subcontinent raise their voice against such inhuman and beastly face of the so-called democracy of the Indian State and its judiciary and executive. As in the case of Dr. Muhammad Qasim we need to demand the release of many of the 45 odd political prisoners serving life sentence in various prisons in the subcontinent. The list of the names many of these prisoners are provided as annexe though it is not an exhaustive one.
Putting Dr. Muhammad Qasim further behind bars goes against the very grain of all civil and political rights and freedoms assured by the Constitution of India as well as the International Law. The prolonged incarceration of Dr. Muhammad Qasim is testimony to the continuing repression and trampling of all freedoms of the people of Jammu & Kashmir for their political aspirations. As the State use every draconian law within its reach to the maximum (in Dr. Muhammad Qasim’s case the J & K Jail Manual, read with TADA) thousands of Kashmiri Muslims are kept behind bars in various prisons while hundreds languish in undisclosed torture and detention centres. CRPP appeals to every democratic and progressive sections in the subcontinent to raise their voice for the immediate release of Dr. Muhammad Qasim and his co-accused irrespective of his political convictions/beliefs as well as all the lifers most of whom have already finished ten years or more of the sentence.
Brief report about the proceedings of the Book Release Function: The book on Dr. Muhammad Qasmi was released at the Deputy Chairman Hall, Constitution Club, New Delhi jointly by Prof Jagmohan ( nephew of Shaheed Bhagat Singh) and Jeetan Marandi (people’s balladeer who got acquitted by the HC of Jharkhand from death sentence in a framed up case). Prof. Jagmohan in his address after the book release talked about the spirit that Jeetan had given to all of us after a prolonged people’s movement all over the subcontinent for his release. Both the speakers said it is a great victory for the people. Prof. Jagmohan pointed out that Bhagat Singh’s well known slogan of anti imperialism and revolution that he framed in 1917 correctly captured the dialectical relation between the two. Only the correct synthesis of this understanding can save us from these trying times of the growing fangs of fascist assault on the people on all fronts—socio-cultural, politico-economic. Besides he also talked about the need to take cue from the arduous struggle for the release of Jeetan Marandi that gives us strength and hope towards making it possible the release of all political prisoners including Dr. Muhammad Qasim. Thus while referring to the case of more than 40 odd lifers in J&K Prof. Jagmohan stressed the fact that when it comes to a political prisoner the system would always look for the convenient option ensuring that the notion of life imprisonment be for the entire natural life of the political prisoner and hence it becomes important that we demand for the release of all Kashmiri Muslim lifers lodged in different jails and have served around ten years in prison lest they be targets of political vendetta. It is important such books documenting the case and struggle for the release of political prisoners like Dr. Muhammad Qasim be taken to the wider sections of the people. This book release is a welcome step in that direction.
Jeetan Marandi while talking about his torturous experience on death row reminisced how his life from childhood facing abject poverty and forced to discontinue his school after 3rd division had to fight every moment to make his life worth living as a human being. The discerning mind of young Jeetan soon got attracted to the cultural group which used to visit villages and sing songs and act plays that depicted the everyday life of the villagers and the problems they faced. Soon Jeetan’s worldview transforms as he finds purpose in being part of the group and thus also being part of people’s initiatives to do away with their miseries. Sooner than later had he started singing for the people and their rights than he naturally became the target of state repression. In that context he identifies himself with the incarceration of Dr. Muhammad Qasim. The emotional and moving narrative of Jeetan proved beyond doubt how the struggle to keep one alive in the dungeons is as well the larger struggle to do away with all forms of oppression. He spoke about the need to dream even in adverse times and talk to oneself about the need to not give up hope even for a moment. To fight every minute, moment to keep the star beneath ones breast alive. The prisoner defines himself as well as the world around him in these moments of struggle to stay alive and that is what makes him and his convictions a cherishable dream. A dream worth dreaming in the isolated cell. In a dark cell (anda cell) where there is only some semblance of light at 12 noon every mosquito that sucks your blood, every lizard that creeps across, the spider and its cobweb, everything becomes your friend, as you struggle to make sense out such senseless creatures, meaning out of the life in isolation as you keep watching the lizard eat the insect for hours together. It is the desire to live even in that lifeless world that makes the political prisoner and his struggle inside the confines of the prisons a fight to keep one’s finest sensibilities alive and it the same that the mindless and violent state want him to lose forever. Jeetan feels that in this struggle always the news from outside of people protesting for his release, rallies and public meetings demanding his unconditional release all gave him hope and a strong faith in the strength of the people. And it is this united strength of the people and their struggle that can ensure that the terrible injustice of the kind of incarceration that Dr. Muhammad Qasim and his co-accused is going through can be done away with. The release of all such political prisoners in the subcontinent becomes the need of the hour as part of struggle to humanise ourselves.
Zahid a Kashmiri scholar talked about the need for a united struggle of the people of the subcontinent though their causes are different to defeat the designs of the Indian State to suppress all forms of political dissent. The political prisoners committee can be the right platform to realise that unity.
Prof. SAR Geelani, President CRPP, while presiding over the programme stressed the need for the struggle to unite for the release of all political prisoners in the subcontinent. There are thousands of Kashmiri political prisoners lodged in different jails in the Indian subcontinent though in the present programme we are raising only the case of life convicts in the context of Kashmir (more than 40 of them with many having completed more than 10 years)with specific reference to the continuing incarceration of Dr. Muhammad Qasim. The platform of CRPP is a definite step in the direction towards all forces fighting for the unconditional release of all political prisoners. While pointing out that the rights of the political prisoners has well been recognised in the international law he stressed that it is our duty to struggle to make the Indian State accept the category of political prisoners and their rights.

In Solidarity,

SAR Geelani Amit Bhattacharyya Prof. Jagmohan Singh
President Secretary General Vice President

Jeetan Marandi Rona Wilson
Secretary Secretary, Public Relations

List of Kashmiri Muslims Serving Life Sentence
1. AB Rashid, Udhampor was awarded Death but now changed into Life, Jammu District Amphala Jail
2. Aashiq Hussain Faktoo alias Dr Muhammad Qasim Faktoo Srinager Jail.
3. Ghulam Qadir Butt R/O Dooru Mir Maidan, Islamabad in Khutwa Jail now in Srinagar Jail.
4. Muhammad Ayoub Mir, Sadrabal Kot Bulwal Jail Jammu
5. Muhammad Ayoub Dar, Rawal Pora, Srinagar presently in Srinagar Jail, Life sentence by TADA court Jammu in 2009
6. Iqbal Jan, Bandipora Srinagar Jail
7. Mustaq Kaloo, Sopore co-accused with Iqbal Jan, Tihar jail, New Delhi
8. Mohammad Amin Wani, Banihal
9. Mehmood Toopiwal, Kangan
10. Abdul Waheed Thachi, Banihal
11. Jafar Umar Khanto
12. Javeed Khan, Nowpora, Srinagar Tihar Jai s/o M Shafi Khan Nowpora Srinagar 517-96 Lajpath Nagar Blast
13. M Shafi Khan @Prof Shafi Sharyati Hariwanun Khansahab in Sgr Jail.
14. Noor Muhammad Tantry, Tral, earlier in Tihar, now in Srinagar
15. Feroz Ahmad, Budgam Beerwa
16. Sh Raeis Delhi Tihar
17. Ishaq Pala s/o GH Rasool Tariq Shiekh, Manihal Shopian
18. Shabir Ahmad s/o M Abdullah Butt, Handwara Maratham
19. Mustaq Malik s/o Gh Muhammad Shah, Gund Handwara
20. Gh Muhammad Butt s/o Noor Muhammad Butt Koker Bagh Khag
21. Ab Hamid Teeli s/o GH Hasan Kokerhama, Kulgam
22. Nazir A Shiekh s/o Ab Rashid Batamaloo
23. Showkat A Khan Chotabazar present Nishat
24. Zakir Hussain alias Umar Faoorq, son of Ali Mohd of Malhar,
25. Fayaz Ahmad Shah of Babnad Shopian and Muhammad Syed Bhat of Dirhama Bijbehara.
26. Samiulla Sheikh R/O Patan Baramulla
27. Ghulam Nabi Soura, Srinagar, Kashmir Central Jail, Srinagar
28. Amin Dar Banihal, Jammu, Jammu Jail
29. Barkat Hussain S/O Neik Muhammad Pulwama, Kashmir Jammu Jail
30. Farooq Ahmad, Central Jail, Nagpur
31. Farooq Chopan, Central Jail, Mumbai
32. G. MuhammadWani, Jammu Jail
33. G. Qadir Butt Kupwara, Kashmir, Sub Jail, Kathua
34. Lala Hussain, Jammu Jail
35. Muhammad Akram Butt
36. Muhammad Aslam S/O Kamal Din, Jammu Jail
37. Muhammad Latif S/O Wali Muhammad, Jammu Jail
38. Muhammad Shafi S/O Abdal Karim, Jammu Jail
39. Muhammad Hussain R/ O Hadmat, Jammu Jail
40. Muhammad Shafi S/O Mohammad Abdullah, Jammu Jail
41. Muhammad Yousuf S/O Fetha Muhammad, Jammu Jail

COMMITTEE FOR THE RELEASE OF POLITICAL PRISONERS
185/3, FOURTH FLOOR, ZAKIR NAGAR, NEW DELHI-110025

The Kashmir Great Apple Scam

Posted: April 1, 2013 in Human Rights
Tags: , , , , , , ,
0

DNA Special: Agents decide how much you will pay for Kashmiri apples

Published: Monday, Apr 1, 2013,
By Sandeep Pai | Place: New Delhi | Agency: DNA

Have you ever wondered why Kashmiri apple costs Rs 105/kg in Delhi, Rs110/kg in Mumbai and Rs 120/kg in Bangalore even though its production cost is just about Rs 35/kg? It’s all thanks to agents who on the one hand rob the orchard owners of their earnings and fleece the customers on the other.

Commission agents in major cities such as Delhi manipulate the market and hoard apple to create artificial scarcity and sell it at a high price. For this, they resort to self-buying – they themselves buy the apple in their own name or their men instead of selling it to market immediately.

The draft report of the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) on production and marketing of apple in Jammu and Kashmir – a copy of it is exclusively available with DNA– says, “Supply is manipulated in artificial manner generally at agents level through hoarding of apple in cold stores for short duration and controlled atmosphere stores (CAS) for long duration up to 6-9 months.”

The report says that if a kilo of apple is sold at Rs 100 in market, the grower gets only Rs 26, while the rest goes to retailers and agents.

The commission agents start self buying the apple in July/August, the report says. In Azadpur mandi, around 20% of these agents are big, 20% small and 60% medium in terms of turnover and financial power.

“Price manipulation takes place by artificially quoting price so high so as to attempt exclusion of other smaller buyers from auction and then bringing it down next day/next time to self-buy at whatever price, mostly reduced price because bigger ‘lots’ of boxes cannot be purchased by smaller buyers even if price is low,” the report said.

Even large open auctions are manipulated. “Largely, open auction takes the shape of self buying or buying by market functionaries of agents like ‘fixed match’,” the report says.
Once the auction is manipulated and the apple is bought at a cheap rate, the agents store it in the CAS units to manipulate the supply in market. According to the NABARD report, agents are now setting up cold stores and CAS to store self purchased apple from market.

Read more here -http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_dna-special-agents-decide-how-much-you-will-pay-for-kashmiri-apples_1817662

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Press Release-Kashmir- India, International Law and an act of hypocrisy

Posted: March 27, 2013 in Armed Forces Special Power Act, Conflict and Peace, Draconian Laws, Human Rights, Public Security Act, Right to Dissent, State Violence, Women Rights
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Press Release

The 21 March 2013, United Nations Human Rights Council [UNHRC] resolution is a welcome initial step in the ongoing struggle to hold countries responsible for human rights violations, ranging from Genocide, Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes to Enforced Disappearance, Torture, Rape and Extra-judicial executions. The watered down resolution, moved by the United States, and India’s support for the resolution, requires both commendation and severe criticism at the same time.

There can be no selective morality when it comes to standing against the commission of human rights violations by State’s. Every country must be held to the same standards, as Sri Lanka has been in the instant case, regardless of economic or geo-political concerns. In this regard, the United States and India stand accused of hypocrisy in their dealings with human rights violations in their regions or across the world. Similarly, Pakistan’s vote against the resolution raises serious questions on its own approach to human rights violations in the region or elsewhere.

India’s recognition of the atrocities arising from the Sri Lankan conflict is in direct contrast to its public and international position on Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian institutional culture of moral, political and juridical impunity in Jammu and Kashmir has resulted in, by some estimates [as of 2013], enforced and involuntary disappearance of at least 8000 persons besides more than 70,000 deaths, countless cases of torture and disclosures of more than 6000 unknown, unmarked, and mass graves. In the context of the issue of unmarked and mass graves, despite a series of recommendations by the State Human Rights Commission on 19 October 2011, and an European Parliament resolution of July 2008 urging the Government of India to hold an investigation into the alleged mass/unidentified graves in Kashmir, no action has been taken. Countless violations against the armed forces and the Jammu and Kashmir Police have been brought to the public domain.

The Indian State has evaded, denied and altogether refused to acknowledge its continuing criminal actions in Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian vote for the resolution is therefore, at the same moment, both laudable
and revealing.

Adv. Parvez Imroz
President, JKCCS

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Jammu and Kashmir Biometric Census to begin next month #UID #Aadhaar

Posted: March 23, 2013 in Human Rights, Violence against Women, Women Rights
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200 px

 

ZAHID MAQBOOL

 

greaterkashmir.com

 

 

Srinagar, Mar 22: Biometric census, which constitutes the second phase of the National Population Register (NPR) project, will commence in Kashmir Valley from next month.

 

 Officials associated with the NPR in J&K told Greater Kashmir that biometric census will commence from second week of April from Kulgam and Ganderbal districts.“We have completed the collection of basic data under the first phase. Now we will start holding camps to gather biometric data in valley from next month. Headquarters of Census Operations has already initiated tendering process in this regard,” said Joint Director, Census Operations J&K, Chander Shekhar Saproo.

 

 Official sources said a meeting has been scheduled this week between census officials and District Development Commissioners of Ganderbal and Kulgam.

 

 “We will start from districts that are less in area comparatively. It will help officials associated with Census to gain experience in the work which will help them in other major districts later,” officials said.

 

 Meanwhile government has already started biometric census in J&K from district Samba in Jammu.The government had launched NPR project in the year 2010 with a motive to provide National Identity Cards to each and every citizen of Jammu and Kashmir. The form filling and house-listing process was started by Census department in August 2010.

 

 NPR will be an exhaustive database, listing all residents in the state, district, block, village, and household. The register will include any person who stays or intends to stay in an area for six months or more, both citizens and non-citizens, and the data will eventually be replaced by a National Register of Indian Citizens (NRIC).

 

 Pertinently the State government was asked by the Centre to replace the Aadhar project with NPR as has been done by various other states across the country.

 

 “The process is basically aimed to give every citizen a unique mode to identify himself in front of the governing body. For this purpose, a Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) was formed by the Planning Commission last year,” sources said.

 

 

 

What ails the the ‘RIGHT TO SELF DETERMINATION’ Movement ?

Posted: March 13, 2013 in Armed Forces Special Power Act, Conflict and Peace, Draconian Laws, Human Rights, Public Security Act, Right to Dissent, State Violence, Violence against Women, Women Rights
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By Niloofar Qureshi

Published: Wed, 13 March 2013 08:14 PM

 

 

The latest spurt of protests in the Valley, which commenced with the execution of Afzal Guru, got extended due to the mysterious death of a Kashmiri student in Hyderabad and has thereafter continued in the aftermath of a youth shot by the security forces in Baramulla. A ‘protest calendar’ was promptly issued and with people taking to the streets in large numbers, normal life came to a standstill, proving once again that the situation in Kashmir continues to be extremely volatile. Though the separatists must be congratulating themselves for having pulled off a major ‘victory’ through such widespread and prolonged protests, they must not forget that they had played no role in initiating the protests- they were just lucky to get repeated opportunities!
There is no doubt that unfolding events should be used for furthering the ongoing movement for the ‘right to self determination’. However, events should not become the sole agency for the same. Though the widespread protests in the aftermath of the Afzal Guru execution, the mysterious death of the Kashmiri student studying in Hyderabad and the killing of a protester in Baramulla are certainly valid reasons for protesting, such incidents by themselves alone cannot be expected to usher in the change we desire. For, though these incidents do illustrate the sorry plight of Kashmiris, unfortunately, the international community perceives these as mere law and order problems.
While many nations and human rights bodies criticised New Delhi after the Afzal Guru hanging, the criticism was for India’s continuation of the death penalty and not even a single country questioned the legality of this execution or the way it was done. The Hyderabad suicide case too has not evoked any international response and is probably being viewed by the international community as the personal decision of an individual. The Baramulla killing also seems to have unfortunately fallen in the ‘common category’ of  the death of a protester who was shot by the security forces while discharging their ‘legitimate duty’ of maintaining law and order!
What our leaders fail to comprehend is that, in practice, the international community follows moral standards that are far removed from the high ethical values it publically proclaims to uphold. And in order to justify its own perverted sense of reasoning and depraved conscience, it has craftily coined euphemisms like “global war on terror,” “legitimate targets” and “unavoidable co-lateral damage’. Take the case of the American drone campaign in Pakistan- it is no secret that for every terrorist killed in drone attacks, scores of innocent men women and children are also being killed or maimed. Yet, no one seems to mind and though everyone admits that this is ‘unfortunate’, the ‘collective conscience’ of the international community is satisfied by the warped logic that it is simply a case of ‘unavoidable co-lateral damage’, which occurs when attacking a ‘legitimate target’ in the ‘global war against terror’!
That the ‘terrorism factor’ has also helped New Delhi in enforcing brute force in Kashmir too is no secret. While human right activists and even the UN have made repeated appeals for revocation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), New Delhi has played the ‘terrorism’ card well to counter the same. And, since all those who matter are in some way connected in the ‘global war’ on terror, none are willing to seriously intervene. Their reluctance is understandable, since they are all ‘partners in crime’ and guilty of excesses against innocent civilians. While America cannot do so much since it has the blood of innocents on its hands from drone attacks, Pakistan, which openly espouses the ‘Kashmir cause’ cannot afford opening the ‘can of worms’ of its own murky dealings in the Tribal areas and Balochistan.
The separatists therefore need to introspect. As they have experienced the futility of violence and rightly committed themselves to peace, they should advise the people, especially the youth to refrain from violence. There is an urgent need to educate the youth about the immense power of peaceful protests. Stone pelting and occasional wrecking of public property may seem to be very mild forms of violence, but it nevertheless is. And once protesters resort to violence of any type, then the security forces get an excuse to retaliate and this often results in avoidable loss of life. It should be remembered that the ‘right to self determination’ will certainly not fall into our laps just by needlessly sacrificing our youth and the summer unrest of 2010 in which 122 precious lives were lost, is a grim reminder of this!
The next issue, which the separatist leadership needs to guard against, is to suggest that ‘armed resistance’ could be a viable alternative to the peaceful struggle. Unfortunately, in the recent past, at least two separatist leaders (who have themselves publically denounced the use violent means for achieving the ‘right to self determination’) have made such comments. We have had more than our share of violence and suffered untold miseries due to the same. Being mature and experienced, our leaders know very well that the era of effecting change through the force of arms is long over. Instigating the youth to take up arms would only make them ‘cannon fodder’ and bring more miseries upon our people without achieving anything. In fact, no one would be happier than New Delhi if this happens, as it will provide the AFSPA a new lease of life in Kashmir!
The next point relates to the lack of direction, which the current philosophy of the ‘right to self determination’ movement in Kashmir suffers from.  This is because rather than concentrating on evolving a comprehensive strategy to make it more meaningful and self-sustaining, the separatist leadership seems to be content with solely relying on reacting to incidents and events to carry it forward. In the process, the ideological movement for the ‘right to self determination’ has been reduced to merely a petty ‘agitation’ that erupts whenever acts of excesses against the public occurs and then, its business as usual, till the next such an incident takes place!
Lastly, a one must never forget that for the ‘right to self determination’ movement to succeed, patience and perseverance is essential. However, this will be a daunting task as the youth has become restive, as it has been ‘programmed’ to believe that ‘azadi’ is just round the corner! And this is where their leadership qualities of the separatists will play a very important part, as they have to convince the impatient public that such changes do not come overnight.  But once this is achieved, the ongoing movement will automatically acquire an enduring character and being ‘issue based’ rather than ‘event driven’, will surely gain the respect and support it rightfully deserves from the international community.
(The writer is a New Delhi based journalist and can be reached at: niloofar.qureshi@yahoo.com)

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#Kashmir -Pathribal carnage evidence to be recorded in Valley

Posted: March 3, 2013 in Armed Forces Special Power Act, Conflict and Peace, Draconian Laws, Human Rights, Public Security Act, Right to Dissent, State Violence, Violence against Women, Women Rights
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AHMED ALI FAYYAZ, The Hindu

Responding to the public pressure, an Army court on Saturday decided to shift its centre of recording the statements of witnesses in the Pathribal carnage from Nagrota in Jammu to Awantipore in Kashmir valley. The court is holding trial on a chargesheet as the CBI has held a group of the Army officials guilty of killing five civilians in a fake encounter in Anantnag district in March 2000.

Even as the civilian witnesses had declined to travel to the headquarters of 16 Corps at Nagrota, the court had continued its initial proceedings in Jammu. It has finally relented to the extent of facilitating the recording of the evidences at headquarters of Victor Force at Awantipore in south Kashmir.

“Upholding the principles of justice, in a significant endeavour to facilitate timely conclusion of the case, the officer recording Summary of Evidence has been directed to move to Awantipur for recording the statements of the remaining witnesses,” an Army spokesperson said in a handout. He said that fresh summons had been issued to all the witnesses, including the family members of the five persons killed in the controversial shootout.

“Statements of 26 witnesses, including all the Army witnesses and some police as well as government officials, have been recorded so far. However, despite repeated summons issued to the civilian witnesses, they have not come forward to depose before the Army court, which is unduly delaying the judicial process”, said the handout. Recording of statements would commence from March 5.

On the night intervening March 20 and 21 in 2000, 35 male members of the Sikh community were massacred outside a Gurudwara at Chittisinghpura in Anantnag district. Four days later, officials of Rashtriya Rifles 7th battalion claimed to have killed “five foreign mercenaries” holding them responsible for the massacre. Soon, the residents of different villages developed suspicions with regard to the Army’s claim. They held demonstrations, asking the authorities to trace out the five civilians, who had been picked up in late night raids by different units of the armed forces.

As the residents’ demand grew louder with the death of seven demonstrators in firing by the men of Special Operations Group of Anantnag district police, a special investigation was ordered and all the five bodies were exhumed under magisterial supervision. Fudging of some tissue samples in a Forensic Science laboratory led to a fresh pandemonium. Finally, the investigation was assigned to the CBI.

In 2006, CBI completed its investigation and produced challan in a designated court in Srinagar. It found five Army officials responsible for stage-managing a fake encounter and claimed that the five innocent civilians had been killed so as to project them as the militants responsible for the Sikhs’ massacre.

Brig. Ajay Saxena, Lt. Col. Brajendra Pratap Singh, Maj. Sourabh Sharma, Maj. Amit Saxena and Subedar Idrees Khan were charged by the CBI with the murder of the five civilians.

However, Army put up resistance, claiming that the courts could not hold the trial without proper sanction from the government of India, as the Army in Jammu and Kashmir enjoyed special powers and immunity against such prosecutions. The High Court of Jammu and Kashmir stayed the proceedings in 2007.

The CBI pleaded that it was a “cold-blooded murder” of innocent civilians and the armed forces’ special powers and immunity were restricted only to the genuine counter-insurgency operations. The Supreme Court did not agree with the CBI but directed the Army to either hold the trial in its own court or choose the option of a civil court. On September 20, 2012, Lt. Gen. A.S. Nandal, who is also GOC of 16 Corps, started hearing the CBI case after the matter was shifted from the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate Srinagar to the Army court.

On January 14, 2013, the General Court Marshal asked the family members of the five deceased persons to depose at Nagrota on January 28 but they refused to travel to Jammu and expressed security concerns. Finally, the Army court decided to record rest of the witnesses’ statements in the Valley.

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#Kashmir- Reading the ‘Un-Known Violence’ of the ‘Known’ #Kunanposhpora #Vaw

Posted: February 24, 2013 in Armed Forces Special Power Act, Conflict and Peace, Draconian Laws, Human Rights, Public Security Act, Right to Dissent, State Violence, Women Rights
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  • Musab Iqbal,

In Kunan Poshpora perhaps lie the truth of not only largest democracy, which moves on million boots, but also the secret of its non- violent conscience. The society whose conscience find no stimulation from the ‘distant’ brutality on it’s top, on it’s margin and in it’s heart.

It reminds us how the existence of oppressive power is denial of dignity to the oppressed. It reminds us of the history that is present and a past, which is not forgettable, and about the future which will emerge from the history of ruins.

The dream to come true is the dream of complete freedom from the rule of the power, which decides for itself and operates on us. The future is not known but what known is the presence of resistance; resistance against the ‘obvious’ – obvious of the power.

Can one speak after such an ordeal – a brutal operation on mind and body but then does ‘one’ remain after such a tragedy. There is no ‘one’ left – the experience transformed ‘one’ into ‘many’ and then into ‘another one’. The impossibility thus is in that very transformation whose beginning point is the singularity of the ‘collective pain’ shared by all but experienced by ‘one’. The moral of ‘one’ is then not in resistance – resistance to brutality but in the existential resistance to that very ‘other’. Resistance to the very operation of brutal has no meaning but the resistance to existence is the essence of that transformed ‘one’: Another One.

Can ones Army be imagined to rape and traumatize its own people but then we are forced to ask do army have any ‘people’ as ‘own’ people. The deployment itself is a detachment from ‘own-ness’. The police in localities of ours if catches someone, does that someone remains police’s own or not. The organized movement to traumatize ends the possibility of ‘own’ and ‘people’.

 

- 23rd February 2013, on his blog http://musab.in/

Kashmir’s new age of dissent

Posted: February 20, 2013 in Armed Forces Special Power Act, Conflict and Peace, Draconian Laws, Human Rights, Public Security Act, Right to Dissent, State Violence, Violence against Women, Women Rights
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Dawn |  | 16th February, 2013

WHETHER Afzal Guru’s execution was just is for the jurists and legal experts to debate and decide. But let’s look at some other issues.

Perhaps, a more significant matter it brought to light is that while India and Pakistan remain wedded to old positions, dissent in the Kashmir valley has taken a new turn.

The Kashmiri was convicted of being involved in the attack on the Indian parliament in 2001 based on circumstantial evidence and was hanged in considerable haste and interred in the grounds of Delhi’s Tihar jail last Saturday when even his family hadn’t been intimated.

Many observers have pointed out that while those convicted of murders much before the attack on Lok Sabha in 2001 such as those held responsible for Rajiv Gandhi’s murder in 1991 are still alive because of the judicial review process, Guru was denied such relief even if it were to be temporary.

This, coupled with the imposition of curfew in Srinagar and elsewhere in the valley and a media shutdown, was attributed to the Indian authorities’ mindset in dealing with Kashmiris where, simmering Kashmiris alleged, a different yardstick is being applied compared to Rajiv Gandhi’s Tamil killers whose ethnic group is seen as part of the Indian mainstream.

While the Indian government’s ‘muscular’ stance is consistent with its policies over the years, across the border Pakistan officially refrained from commenting on the judicial process though it ‘reaffirmed’ solidarity with the Kashmiri people.

It wasn’t a surprise that the more vocal response came from the ‘semi-official’ Jamaatud Dawa (banned militant group Lashkar-i-Taiba) leader Hafiz Saeed and a senior leader of the Jaish-i-Mohammad. Both of them condemned ‘martyr’ Guru’s execution and vowed to avenge it.

All these voices, of course, represented forces ‘external’ to Kashmir. External but not disinterested. However, these views, positions seemed caught in a time warp: the Indian state muscle, Pakistan’s ‘principled stance’ and the militant groups’ blood-curdling vendetta threats.

If you look at the valley itself you can see how the mood there has evolved over the past decade and how it has moved away from armed resistance to what writer Mirza Waheed, who won acclaim with The Collaborator, calls the “new age of dissent”.

The gun of the 1990s has been replaced by unarmed yet massive peaceful demonstrations and more so by the pen, with an explosion of writers, researchers, columnists dedicated to writing Kashmir’s history, documenting human rights abuses with a ‘we’ll not forget’ philosophy as the central theme.

Powerful fiction and non-fiction is emerging from the valley with Basharat Peer (Curfewed Night), Mirza Waheed, and Siddhartha Gigoo (Garden of Solitude) writing poignantly heartrending prose, informed as it is by their experiences of the bloodshed there in the 1990s in particular.

And the one common denominator which screams out to be seen, heard and acknowledged is that those representing this so-called new age of dissent, mainly through unarmed defiance, reject the mediation of Pakistan and Indian narratives.

A lawyer, Pervez Imroz, who has followed and documented cases of human rights abuses including disappearances and extra-judicial killings blamed on the state is seen as a hero. One writer says: “His unarmed defiance has done more for the Kashmir cause than all the attacks by armed groups.”

Imroz was the central figure in the British TV Channel 4’s chilling documentary, Kashmir’s Torture Trail, detailing cases of torture and other excesses against Kashmiri civilians suspected of involvement in militant activities. In December last year Imroz co-authored an eye-opening report.

The report, published under the aegis of People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in the Indian-Administered Kashmir (IRTK) and the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), says it is based mostly on government documents and witness testimonies.

It names 500 ‘perpetrators’ including senior army and paramilitary as well as police officials in 214 specific cases. Such reports may not have caught the fancy of the mainstream Indian media but have been read by most Kashmiris who are able to and that cements their defiance.

The growth of the writing and new media has also given a substantial voice to these new age dissenters. There is a staggering array of bloggers and online writers. How this generation of writer-dissenters is coming of age is easily understood if one googles their names and sees their work.

Kashmir-based young lawyer and writer Arif Ayyaz Parrey who addresses the issue of beheadings; Ather Zia, PhD candidate at the University of California at Irvine, a poet and a telling short story writer; Wasim Bhat, who has written a significant book on the cultural and historical density of Srinagar.

Sameer Bhat, journalist and sharp satirist, who is currently with Khaleej Times; Parvaiz Bukhari, one of Kashmir’s finest journalist-writers and a great political thinker, is working on what is already being seen as a seminal book on the militarisation of Kashmir.

Then there is UK-based scholar-poet Nitasha Koul; and Mohamad Junaid, a Kashmiri anthropologist at City University of New York, whose essay Stone Wars on the uprising of 2001 is enough to give one a chill. The list goes on and on and this was by no means exhaustive.

Even a hurried read through a selection of their work leaves one with the distinct impression that their love of their land and their people is infinite; and that their Kashmiri identity shines through. They are writing their own distortion-free history and documenting how they have been wronged.

And this extends to all Kashmiris including Hindu Pandits on whose plight and exodus Gigoo was the first to write. Rahul Pandita’s recent book (Our Moon has Blood Clots) is also part of this effort, though many people in Kashmir disagree with his account.

One wishes Islamabad and Delhi’s civil and military establishments would take a leaf out of the Kashmiris’ new age struggle and genuinely abandon the quest for a solution by force. A historical wrong may be righted. Perhaps, it is time to revisit the formula of soft borders and demilitarisation again.

The writer is a former editor of Dawn.

abbas.nasir@hotmail.com

 

#India Rapists in Uniform- #Kashmir #AFSPA #Vaw

Posted: February 18, 2013 in Human Rights, Women Rights, Armed Forces Special Power Act, Public Security Act, Conflict and Peace
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Vol – XLVIII No. 08, February 23, 2013 | Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal

There have been numerous allegations of rape by the police and armed forces in the Kashmir Valley ever since insurgency began in the late 1980s, but very few cases were ever investigated, prosecutions have taken place in a negligible number, and justice delivered in none. Even when cases are registered, the legal sanction required for prosecution, as per the provisions of laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act, is never accorded. The Justice Verma Committee Report has addressed sexual aggression in confl ict areas such as Kashmir, Chhattisgarh and the north-east, where women’s bodies have been used as instruments of war by paramilitary forces, but can we hope for a change on the ground?

Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal (anusaba@gmail.com) is Executive Editor, Kashmir Times and a human rights activist based in Jammu and Kashmir.

Last month when the 600 page- Justice Verma Committee Report, suggesting not just the amendments in the criminal laws dealing with sexual assault, but challenging the very core of patriarchal power structures came out, it kindled some hope among feminist groups and groups working for rights of the marginalised communities including in the conflict areas.

In Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), barring the Sangh parivar and the armed forces, the report was by and large welcomed for its path-breaking recommendations on amendment of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) to exclude personnel accused of sexual offences from immunity, from being prosecuted in a civil court, provided by this special law and also for recommending a complete review of the AFSPA. However, there was also a guarded scepticism with which the state, particularly the Valley, the worst hit by the impunity provided to men in uniform under AFSPA, responded. The social networking sites were filled with discussions with phrases like “too good to be true”, “doesn’t look like it will be implemented” or “don’t forget, Justice Verma is also the man who upheld the legal constitutional validity of AFSPA in a Supreme Court judgment in 2011”.

Historical Scepticism

The scepticism has a historical background as Kashmiris have been witness to promises and lip sympathy that never get translated into action in the last over six decades. From Nehru’s promise of plebiscite to Narasimha Rao’s “sky is the limit” assurance, from Vajpayee’s peace process to Manmohan Singh’s promise of zero tolerance to human rights abuse, in the collective memories of people in the Valley everything that sounds good is followed by disaster on the ground.

The historical inherent scepticism apart, there were valid reasons why the Justice Verma Committee Report would not generate enough optimism in the Valley. The state has always responded with a kind of obsessive protectiveness when it comes to saving the neck of the security personnel including the local police which does not enjoy impunity under AFSPA as happened in the Shopian rapes and murders of 2009 and the over 120 killings in 2010, in which police stand indicted but unchallenged by instruments of law. There is a belief that the government will find a way to wriggle out of at least this part of the Verma panel report to keep up with the tradition of going out of the way to protect men accused of human rights abuse including sexual offences. And so when on 1 February 2013 the central government came up with a hurried ordinance without the major provisions of the Verma report, given the presidential nod two days later to become a law for the next 18 days till Parliament could debate it, for the sceptics in the Valley it was a vindication of their cynicism. The Valley slipped back into its pessimism after a short-lived glimmer of half-hearted hope.

Sealed Fate of Rape Cases

At the core of this pessimism lies the sealed fate of the cases of rapes and molestations at the hands of security forces and the untold stories of similar harassment, buried behind the fear of stigma and ostracisation or lack of access to institutions of justice as also the shoddy legitimisation of such acts of sexual violence in the name of “national interest”, “counter-insurgency”, “in the line of duty” and “upholding the morale of the security forces” who enjoy blanket impunity for acts that cannot be justifiably defended. From the infamous gang rapes of Kunan Poshpora in 1990 to Shopian’s spine-chilling double rapes and murders, and the equally shocking cover-up by official investigating agencies, two decades of insurgency and counter-insurgency period in J&K are littered with cases that exemplify the victimisation and vulnerability of women in a militarised conflict.

There is a complete denial of the same in official circles and according to a former J&K director general of police (DGP), as stated in 2009, there are only 10 cases of rape reported by security forces. A publication of the United Nations, however, puts the number of rapes by security forces at 882 in 1992 alone. A report of the Human Rights Watch in 1994, stating that there was high incidence of rapes in Kashmir, documents the use of rape as a means of targeting women whom the security forces accuse of being militant sympathisers. The report also gives a detailed account of how in raping them the forces attempt to punish and humiliate an entire community.

Rape as a Weapon

One case of mass rapes in Shopian in 1992 typifies the official response. A government statement on the case maintains, “two of the women alleged to have been raped were wives of terrorists, viz, Takub Hussain, a platoon commander of Hizbul Mujahideen and Mohd Yakub a group commander of the same militant group”. Asia Watch maintains that one of the ways security forces in Kashmir use rape is as a weapon against women suspected of being sympathetic to or related to alleged militants. While we do not know whether such suspicions motivated the soldiers responsible for the rapes of these women, it is clear that the authorities intend to use the accusation that the women associated with “terrorists” – both to discredit the women’s testimony and implicitly at least shirk responsibility for the abuse. When countered with the Asia Watch report, the police officials maintain that Asia Watch has its own agenda to put the security forces in a bad light. The allegations, mentioned by Asia Watch, do not figure anywhere in the official records.

The manner in which official data on rapes in conflict is collated illustrates the callousness, deliberate or conditioned by an inherent prejudice. Statistics compiled by the crime branch of police states 936 women were killed by militants since 1990. One hundred and twenty-five of them were abducted and killed. Another 132 women were abducted and freed and many of these were also raped, though no numbers are as yet compiled. However, the cases of rapes by security forces are not even acknowledged. A top police officer some years ago maintained, there are only 20 cases of rapes registered since 1990 against security forces in which four cases were proved and 14 security men were punished. DGP Kuldeep Khoda in 2009, faced by the outrage over Shopian twin rapes and murders, reduced this number to 10.

Farce of Inquiries

While only a fraction of the cases of rape and sexual violence by armed forces are discussed in media and academic circles, the official denial continues, followed or aided by the farce of inquiries, probes and reports that are one-sided or never see the light of the day. The normal process of the law, starting with registering of a formal complaint in the police station, followed by a trial, is not the norm. The case is either simply hushed up or even if there is a magisterial probe, or an inquiry by a retired judge or a court martial proceeding – all in a bid to respond to public anger – they end up as an eyewash. The cases where the armed forces claim to have taken action in the courts of inquiry remain a poor joke, all at the expense of the trauma of the victim and her further ostracisation from society. In May 1990, Mubina Gani, a bride being taken along with her bridegroom and baratis after the marriage was solemnised, was raped in south Kashmir by the Border Security Force (BSF). Her aunt accompanying the marriage party was raped too. One man was killed and several wounded. A government inquiry held the BSF men guilty but the latter were never prosecuted. However, a BSF staff court of inquiry that held the men guilty “suspended seven men”. Normally, a person convicted for rape could get up to 10 years in prison if the normal Indian legal procedures are followed.

In yet another case, in November 2004, when a mother-daughter duo was allegedly raped by an army major in Handwara-Badar Payein, the case simply ended in an internal army enquiry which held the major “guilty of misconduct”. While these words were misleading, the post-mortem reports in the case were never really made public. The government inquiries are neither made public nor followed up with the security forces. The courts of inquiry by the security agencies, even if they hold their own men guilty, never punish them adequately. The maximum punishment given is suspension, or no more than the remark of “severe displeasure” gets recorded.

In a negligible number of cases, prosecution takes place. In none of them has justice been delivered. In some cases where the government has ordered inquiries mostly under judicial magistrates, or where security forces order their own court of inquiries, the findings and punishments are not made public, leaving victims to believe that such abuse is committed with impunity. The security forces are just not held accountable, and in many instances cases are not even registered against them. Even when cases are registered, the legal sanction required for prosecution, as per the provisions of laws like AFSPA, is never accorded.

Significant to Conflict Areas

This is why the Justice Verma Committee Report is significant with respect to Kashmir and other conflict areas since it looks into sexual aggression of a different kind in places like Kashmir, north-east and Chhattisgarh, where women’s bodies have been instruments of war by the paramilitaries which are supposed to protect them. The panel not only outright rejects the impunity that the soldiers enjoy for sexual offences and calls for an amendment in the law to exclude the mandatory central government sanction for prosecution of such offenders, maintaining that they need to be straightaway tried in the civil court of law, it also questions the very utility of the AFSPA that gives the armed forces this clause of massive impunity. The panel has called for a complete review of the law and significantly points out, “It must be recognised that women in conflict areas are entitled to all the security and dignity that is afforded to citizens in any other part of our country”. In doing so it has questioned the very biased role of the State in a place like J&K and has placed sexual violence in the centrality of the AFSPA discourse, which has been missing even from a Kashmiri perspective.

There has been strong opposition to the draconian law imposed in the state in 1990 owing to the pattern of impunity it offers to the armed forces for torture, killings, fake encounters, custodial killings, custodial disappearances and rape. Women activists have been at the forefront challenging AFSPA. However, protests are much more feeble in cases of rapes and molestations, where a woman is seeking justice for herself, than over cases of torture and custodial killings or missing youth, where women come forward not just in the traditional role of mothers, daughters and sisters, but also enter the public domain as household heads. Kashmiri society may have to look inward to challenge the centrality of this patriarchal set-up which not only sets the limits of women entering the political domain in the role of agitationists, also for challenging the “honour” discourse, often with the binaries of “us” and “them” that encourages sexual violence to be seen from the prism of stigma and forbids greater participation of women in seeking justice for the surviving victims.

Though sexual violence has not been central to the discourse challenging AFSPA, opposition to it is something that lies at the core of the human rights movement in J&K. For this reason, any move to revoke the law, or challenge some of its demeaning provisions would be welcomed by and large in the state, particularly in the Valley. The Criminal Laws Amendment Ordinance 2013 in no way matches the Justice Verma Committee Report. Silence on AFSPA is only one of the differences. However, the report is yet to be placed before Parliament for formulation of a final law; so it is still too premature to conclude that the government would try its best to exclude the recommendations related to AFSPA, though the haste with which the ordinance was brought about when Parliament session was less than a month away raises doubts. The recent statements of Union Law Minister Ashwani Kumar that carried an implicit approval of rape in “the line of duty” and another by Union Finance Minister P C Chidambaram that broad consensus is needed to accept the recommendations on the review of AFSPA further strengthen these doubts. Chidambaram’s more recent remarks at a public lecture that it is difficult to challenge AFSPA because of the army’s opposition strengthen this scepticism. Yet, hypothetically, if AFSPA-related recommendations are incorporated into the proposed law, would it make any difference to Kashmir?

Any hypothetical outcome would depend on how the J&K state government implements the provisions of this law. By virtue of the special status accorded to the state, the Indian Penal Code (IPC) does not apply to J&K, which has its own equivalent Ranbir Penal Code (RPC) and so amendments carried out in the IPC have not been adopted in the RPC. Any law legislated by Parliament or any amendments carried out in the existing laws are not automatically extended to J&K. It is also not legally binding upon the state government to incorporate them. In most probability, the state government would review its own existing laws dealing with sexual offences. An exercise to this extent has already begun with the state government on 6 February announcing a committee to enter into consultations with various groups and stakeholders as well as study the Justice Verma Committee Report. The panel headed by the state’s advocate general was to submit its report within a week’s time, according to official spokesperson. The state’s law department has also sought suggestions from law experts, civil society members and academicians. But while the initiative has not been much publicised for encouraging holistic public participation, one week is too short a period for inviting and studying such suggestions and then finalising a report.

At the time of writing, the State’s Commission for Women (SCW), a highly politicised body headed by a member of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, is the only one that is known to have so far responded to the law department with suggestions regarding amendments to the state law. The contents of its suggestions are not known, but the only public statement made by the SCW called for harsher laws like death penalty and chemical castration, which goes against the grain of the Verma Committee Report. The composition of the committee formed by the J&K’s law ministry to review the criminal laws dealing with sexual offences itself is problematic. How does one expect a body comprising government functionaries minus any women representation to either challenge the patriarchy that endorses the culture of rape or the might of the state that protects the culprit by subverting the process of justice?

These might not be the only flaws with the state government’s exercise which has a record of raising the bogey of special status of the state to thwart and oppose people-friendly central laws, though exceptions are made when it comes to laws like the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act and the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). J&K was the first state in the country to implement POTA. It was under pressure that the J&K government framed its own Right to Information Act but in a diluted form. Later amendments that strengthened the Act a bit were modified again last year to further weaken it. Despite tremendous pressure, the state government is neither able to incorporate the provisions of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Indian Constitution, providing for decentralisation of powers to the grass roots, nor frame an equivalent state law. The state government has also been stonewalling the Lokayukta in J&K on grounds that the state has its own state accountability law, which stands diluted and looks like a hollowed-out clone of the Lokayukta.

Conclusions

Given the background and tradition of hostility to introducing people-friendly laws and the hasty and clumsy manner in which a committee has been framed with a deadline of a week for studying recommendations and framing a suitable report, it is difficult to presume that the state government would come out with a law matching the Verma panel recommendations. It might in all probability be a cut and paste of the Ordinance 2013, which has omitted AFSPA and most other suggestions that challenge the patriarchal order that lies at the core of sexual offences and the might of the state that stonewalls an effective legal justice system through procedural protocols to be followed in investigations and medical examinations and calls for penalisation of cops guilty of dereliction of duty in responding to complaints of rape and other sexual assault.

So even if the central law eventually incorporates the suggestions related to AFSPA as recommended by the Verma Committee, unless the state law is adequate enough to ensure an effective legal justice mechanism and is powerful enough to challenge patriarchy (patriarchy being central to how rape is placed within the paradigm of honour and encourages a tendency to stigmatise the survivors) so that survivors can freely report complaints of sexual assault, it is unlikely that the armed forces personnel charged of the crimes would be adequately penalised. The state has appropriated enough power to give full protection to the culprits in uniform overtly or covertly with all-out efforts made to hide facts and even tamper with evidence. The state police personnel, not covered under AFSPA, accused of rapes are already being shielded through methods like hushing up cases at the medical examination level, tampering evidence, delaying the basic documentation of the case, refusing to register cases, sending in state-sponsored teams or the highly influenced Central Bureau of Investigation to probe such cases.

Such methods employed for obfuscating and burying the truth have already been used in the Shopian rapes and murders of 2009 to the extent of sending the proactive judge of the high court, at whose intervention the arrests of the police officers he held guilty of tampering with evidence if not committing the rapes and murders were made, on a transfer to Sikkim. They have also been employed in cases where the armed force personnel are involved. In the Kunan Poshpora rapes of February 1991, in which over 30 women and children were allegedly gang-raped by soldiers of the fifth Rajputana rifles, no formal complaint was lodged. A local magistrate was called for investigation, but authorities in Delhi vehemently denied the incident without even verifying with local officials. A police investigation was never carried out.

The absence of adequate documentation of such cases would make any fair trial in all these cases of sexual abuse very difficult, even if it is assumed that the lawmakers at the centre and in J&K are able to frame the best of laws. The union law ministry in maintaining that the Ordinance 2013 will have no bearing on the Delhi bus gang rape having come into being after the Act also betrays the impossibility of a hypothetical diluted AFSPA being used with retrospective effect. Justice in the known cases of rapes by men in uniform will, in that case, remain elusive. In all probability, the security forces and the politicians, who have enabled the armed forces to trample women’s right to safety, security and dignity will continue to do so without being accountable, despite the painstaking efforts of the three-member Verma Committee.

 

#Kashmir -In your country #poem

Posted: February 18, 2013 in Armed Forces Special Power Act, Conflict and Peace, Draconian Laws, Human Rights, Public Security Act, Right to Dissent, State Violence, Violence against Women, Women Rights
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There is no post office, but the martyrs dispatch

In your country, I heard

There is no rail network, but the courage moves

In your country, I heard

The nights are cufewed, but the dreams wander

In your country, I heard

The hills and mountains stay in poets’ heart

In your country, I heard

The trembling sky finds the lyrical smile

In your country, I heard

The brightness is uncertain and darkness is oblivious

In your country, you say

The numbers have no meaning, counting has no history

In your country, you say

You all are poets, of loss, of memory, of madness

In your country, you say

The murders are guarded by law, tyrants govern

In your country, you say

There are no doors; windows only open for numb hope

In your country, you say

The filthy boots trample the saffron fields, ruin innocence

In your country, you say

The heart subsists summer, the eyes bear the winters

In your country, I say

Thousand worlds live together, geography bows

In your country, I say

The empires tremble, million marches don’t sway

In your country, I say

Aroma of spring bring paradise on our ways

In your country, I say

Martyrs don’t rest, their soul calls for complete freedom

In your country, I say

Being stands for beauty, time stands for envious messenger

In your country, I say

All oppressors will suicide, dignity will be the end fate

- 18th February 2012.

By- Musab Iqbal

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