Ahead of the World Human Rights Day, which is observed worldwide on December 10, the Joint Resistance Leadership (JRL) comprising Syed Ali Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik, urged the international community and the people of India to take a serious note of the “unending and unabated rights violations” in Kashmir.
The leadership in a statement said that as December 10 would witness mass rallies of people and activists across the globe in favour of upholding and respecting the human rights, “Kashmir would be among the very few places in the world where people would not be allowed to register their resentment and protest against the worst kind of state oppression they are facing, which has left behind gory tales of rights violations.”
The leadership said that Jammu and Kashmir has seen and continues to see the “worst ever human rights violations as state repression goes from bad to worse with the increase in killings especially of youth to subvert the people movement”.
“With complete impunity to forces from accountability and centralised rule, the graph of human rights violations keeps on rising. All political and religious rights of the people are also suspended.”
The JRL said that “Kashmir being the world’s highest militarised zone, even the basic right to life is always under threat. Killings, torture, arbitrary and illegal incarceration, thrashing of youth, cordon and search military operation, maiming and snatching the vision of people including infants have become an everyday affair.”
It said force is used against the people irrespective of gender and age. The JRL said the “criminal silence” adopted by international human rights bodies and activists over the ever deteriorating situation in Kashmir “is extremely sad”. The Leadership said that such is the “suffocating situation of repression in Kashmir that when JRL announced to observe December 3-9 as human rights week, even candlelight protests were disallowed.”
It said “anyone participating in these protests is lodged in jails.””Massive crackdown was launched on the traders, transporter and even businessmen who took out peaceful rallies against the grim human rights situation in Kashmir. Such is the antipathy of the authoritarian state to basic democratic principles,” it said.
Meanwhile, the JRL asked the people of Kashmir to observe complete protest strike on December 10 to highlight the “gruesome human right situation” and to register resentment against the “apathy of international community and rights organisations towards the plight of people of Kashmir.”
The Leadership once again urged the world peace organizations, international community, Amnesty International Asia Watch, UNHRC and ICRC to take note of the Kashmir situation and put pressure on New Delhi to stop the grave human rights violation forthwith.