What's new

Mass Graves Found in Kashmir

MadDog

FULL MEMBER
Aug 28, 2007
1,920
5
2,499
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/23/world/asia/23kashmir.html

Mass Graves Hold Thousands, Kashmir Inquiry Finds
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Published: August 22, 2011


NEW DELHI — Thousands of bullet-riddled bodies are buried in dozens of unmarked graves across Kashmir, a state human rights commission inquiry has concluded, many of them likely to be those of civilians who disappeared more than a decade ago in a brutal insurgency.

The inquiry, the result of three years of investigative work by senior police officers working for the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission, brings the first official acknowledgment that civilians might have been buried in mass graves in Kashmir, a region claimed by both India and Pakistan where insurgents waged a bloody battle for independence in the early 1990s.

The report sheds new light on a grim chapter in the history of the troubled region and confirms a 2008 report by a Kashmiri human rights organization that found hundreds of bodies buried in the Kashmir Valley.

Tens of thousands of people died in the insurgency, which began in 1989 and was partly fueled by weapons, cash and training from Pakistan.

According to the report, the bodies of hundreds of men described as unidentified militants were buried in unmarked graves. But of the more than 2,000 bodies, 574 were identified as local residents.

“There is every probability that these unidentified dead bodies buried in various unmarked graves at 38 places of North Kashmir may contain the dead bodies of enforced disappearances,” the report said.

The report catalogs 2,156 bodies found in graves in four districts of Kashmir that had been at the heart of the insurgency. It called for a thorough inquiry and a collection of DNA evidence to identify the dead, and, for the future, proper identification of anyone killed by security forces in Kashmir to avoid abuse of special laws shielding the military from prosecution there.

Thousands of people, mostly young men, have disappeared in Kashmir. Some went to be trained as militants in the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir and were killed in the fighting. Many others were detained by Indian security forces. The wives they left behind are known as half-widows, because the fates of their husbands are unknown. Parents keep vigil for sons who were arrested two decades ago.

Parveena Ahanger’s son Javed was taken away by the police on Aug. 18, 1990, and never seen again. An investigation found that he had been killed by security forces, but they have not been prosecuted, she said.

“I never got any response from the government,” she said. “I never got his dead body.”

After years of fighting in the courts to find out what happened to Javed, Ms. Ahanger was skeptical that the human rights report would get her son’s body back, or bring her justice.

“If the high court doesn’t give any justice on this issue, what will the state human rights commission do?” she said.

Zahoor Wani, an activist who works with the families of people who disappeared during the insurgency, said that the report was a welcome first step but that the government must identify the dead and allow families to bury their relatives.

“It is a very good thing that they acknowledge it,” Mr. Wani said. “These families have been living in a hope to see these people again.

“They are neither dead nor alive,” he said. “We need to move them to one pole or the other.”

Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
 
Shame on the so called Indian Democracy.....Kashmiris should come to the streets for
a peacefull movement just what happened in Lybia and Tunisia and the Kashmiri youth
should demand a separate homeland.
 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/24/kashmir-mass-grave-found-_n_935327.html

Kashmir Mass Grave Found: Reported Burial Sites May Contain Thousands Of Bodies
By AIJAZ HUSSAIN 08/23/11 06:04 AM ET

SRINAGAR, India -- An international human rights group is urging India to allow an impartial investigation of hundreds of unmarked graves in Indian-administered Kashmir after a government report confirmed they contain more than 2,000 bullet-riddled bodies, including hundreds of local residents.

Amnesty International said the investigation of graves in three regions also needs to be widened to all of the Indian-controlled portion of the disputed Himalayan territory.

"All unmarked grave sites must be secured and investigations carried out by impartial forensic experts," the London-based group said in a statement late Monday.

The Jammu-Kashmir State Human Rights Commission said in a recent report that 2,156 unidentified bodies were found in graves in three northern mountainous regions, while 574 other bodies in the graves were identified as local residents.

The commission's report is the first official acknowledgment that civilians killed in the two-decade conflict may have been buried in unmarked graves, but stops short of confirming that suspicion, long held by local residents and rights groups.

Previously, officials insisted that all the bodies were of outside militant fighters.

The top elected official in Indian-held Kashmir has proposed a truth and reconciliation commission be set up to probe all killings since Kashmiri militants launched an armed campaign against Indian rule and New Delhi responded with a military crackdown in 1989.

"The commission should be assigned the task to probe all the killings in the state. Whether the killings were carried out by militants or security forces, it needs to be probed," Omar Abdullah said.

Anti-India sentiment runs deep in Kashmir and most people want independence or merger with neighboring Pakistan.

India and Pakistan have fought two wars since 1947 for control of the territory, which is divided between them. India accuses Pakistan of arming and training rebel fighters, but Pakistan says it only offers moral and diplomatic support for their cause.

More than 68,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in the conflict.

Rights groups say some 8,000 people have disappeared, and accuse government forces of staging gunbattles to cover up killings. The groups also say suspected rebels have been arrested and never heard from again.

The state government has countered that most of the missing are probably Kashmiri youths who crossed into Pakistan for weapons training.

In 2008, a rights group reported unmarked graves in 55 villages across the northern regions of Baramulla, Bandipore and Handwara, after which researchers and other groups reported finding thousands of single and mass graves without markers.

Indian officials set up the commission to investigate and also began a separate police probe, the findings of which have yet to be released.
 
Firstly, whatever happened in kashmir is cause of:-

Tens of thousands of people died in the insurgency, which began in 1989 and was partly fueled by weapons, cash and training from Pakistan

You people are the reason!! Period!

Secondly......

According to the report, the bodies of hundreds of men described as unidentified militants were buried in unmarked graves. But of the more than 2,000 bodies, 574 were identified as local residents.

^^^This sums up almost everything...Almost 98% of those bodies are of terrorists who entered in India from across the border and died like dog sh!t scums and still getting killed! when no one accept the body of those scums ,then we were bound to through them in digged wholes..!

And yeah i agree civilians could have been died too and feel sorry for them! Peace...!
As there is a saying..."gehu k saath ghun bhi pista hai"
 
Shame on the so called Indian Democracy.....Kashmiris should come to the streets for
a peacefull movement just what happened in Lybia and Tunisia and the Kashmiri youth
should demand a separate homeland.

Shame on yourself for throwing thousands of uneducated poor people of your country into kashmir for so called Jihad! And then don't accept there died bodies. You people are responsible for this there was peace all around kashmir before your state sponcered jihadi movment in 1989! Shame on yourself and blame yourself for each and everything!

But yeah keep this in mind too no matter how hard you people try, you ain't gona get anything! Fight like a man! Not by these coward ways!
 
@ B_R_I_C

Unfortunately the New York Times report disagrees with you, Pakistan didn't send its poor people
to Kashmir..here is what it says


" Thousands of people, mostly young men, have disappeared in Kashmir. Some went to be trained as militants in the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir and were killed in the fighting. Many others were detained by Indian security forces. The wives they left behind are known as half-widows, because the fates of their husbands are unknown. Parents keep vigil for sons who were arrested two decades ago."

However if i take your reply in the context that you consider all Kashmiris as Pakistanis then yes you are right supressed people from a part of our country which is occupied by India (Kashmir) used to come to Pakistan to get training and then used to go back to fight the Indian Army.

Thanks for not towing the usual Indian line and indirectly agreeing that Kashmiris are Pakistanis and Kashmir is a part of Pakistan..this is what can be inferred from your reply
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Total: 1, Members: 0, Guests: 1)


Pakistan Defence Latest Posts

Back
Top Bottom