Unknown, Unmarked, and Mass Graves in Kashmir

By Dr. Angana Chatterji

Dirt, rubble, thick grass, hillside and flatland, crowded with graves. Signifiers of military and paramilitary terror, masked from the world. Constructed by institutions of state to conceal massacre. Placed next to homes, fields, schools, an army practice range. Unknown, unmarked. Over 940 graves in a segment of Baramulla district alone. Some containing more than one cadaver. Dug by locals, coerced by the police, on village land. Bodies dragged through the night, some tortured, burnt, desecrated. Circulating mythology claims these graves uniformly house ‘foreign militants’. Exhumation and identification have not occurred in most cases. When undertaken, in sizable instances, records prove the dead to be local people, ordinary citizens, killed in fake encounters. In instances where bodies have been identified as local, non-militant and militant, it demystifies state rhetoric that rumours these persons to be ‘foreign militants’, propagating misrepresentation that the demand for self-determination is prevailingly external. Mourned, cared for, by locals, as ‘farz’/duty, as part of an obligation, stated repeatedly, to ‘azadi’. ‘Azadi’/freedom to determine self and future.

On 18 and 20 June, the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (‘Tribunal’, convened in April 2008, www.kashmirprocess.org) visited Baramulla and Kupwara district to conduct ongoing fact-finding and verification related to mass graves at the behest of local communities. The team comprised of Tribunal Conveners Advocate Parvez Imroz and myself, a staff member, and camera crew.

On 18 June, we visited Raja Mohalla in Uri, Baramulla district, 110 kilometres from Srinagar, where 22 graves were constructed between 1996-1997. Then to Quazipora, where 13 bodies were stated as buried in seven graves in 1991. Then we travelled to Chehal, Bimyar village, Uri, holding 235 graves. We re-met Atta Mohammad, gravedigger and caretaker at Chehal, who testified that these bodies, brought by the police, primarily after dark, were buried between 2002-2006. Atta Mohammad said that the bodies appear in his nightmares, each in graphic, gruesome detail. Terrorised by the task forced upon him, his nights are bereft of sleep. Then we travelled to Mir Mohalla, Kichama, Sheeri, to the main graveyard with 105 graves, stated to hold about 225-250 bodies, buried between 1994-2003, and a smaller graveyard, with nine graves, adjacent to a sign proclaiming it a ‘Model Village’.

On 20 June, we visited the northern district of Kupwara. On the way we witnessed army convoys, including one of 21+ vehicles. Created in 1979 through the forking of Baramulla district, approximately 5,000 feet above sea level, Kupwara borders the Line-of-Control to the north and west. Between Shamsbari and Pirpanchal mountain ranges, it is one of the most heavily militarised zones, about 95 kilometres from Srinagar. Kupwara houses six army camps, as military and paramilitary forces occupy significant land. Seven interrogation centres have been operational with police stations functioning as additional interrogation cells. In Handwara town, a watchtower surveils and regulates movement.

In Kupwara, we visited Trehgam village, holding 85-100 graves, 24 of which are identified, and spoke with community members. Trehgam was home to Maqbool Bhat (b. 1938), founding figure of the Jammu Kashmir National Liberation Front. Acknowledged as Shaheed-e-Kashmir, Bhat is labelled a ‘terrorist’ by certain segments of India. He sought to unite the territories of the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir into a secular, sovereign, democratic state. Bhat was sentenced to death by the Supreme Court of India and hanged in Tihar jail in New Delhi on 11 February 1984. Maqbool Bhat’s nephew, Parvaiz Ahmad Bhat, reminded us that Habibullah Bhat, Bhat’s brother, was the first case of enforced disappearance before 1989.

After Trehgam, we reached Regipora around 3 pm and stopped for lunch. There, two persons introduced themselves as Special Branch Kashmir (SBK) and Counter Intelligence Kashmir (CIK) personnel, and questioned the Tribunal staff member about our visit. After responding, we proceeded to the ‘martyrs’ graveyard’ holding 258 graves, constructed in 1995. This burial ground is meticulously ordered, each grave numbered. The body of a 20-25 year old youth was buried in the first week of June, reportedly killed in an encounter in Bamhama village.


We stopped at a roadside tea stall to speak with local people about the graves. Four intelligence personnel questioned us, asking we disclose information about those we had visited. Soon, four additional SBK and CIK personnel joined the questioning. Other intelligence personnel made phone calls. By then, about 12 intelligence personnel gathered. Following further questioning we proceeded toward Srinagar. A car followed at a distance.

We detoured to Sadipora, Kandi, where locals stated that around 20 bodies were buried. The graveyard, overrun with wild flowers, is part of a larger ground used during festivals, including Id. Two of four bodies, killed in a fake encounter on 29 April 2007, were exhumed, identified as locals, contrary to police records stating them to be ‘Pakistani terrorists’. Saidipora holds Riyaz Ahmad Bhat’s grave, killed in the encounter, age 19. Police records, per the First Information Report, declared him a ‘Pakistani terrorist’. Riyaz Bhat was identified by Javeed Ahmed, his brother, as a resident of Kalashpora, Srinagar, based on police photographs from the time of death. Ahmed travelled with the Tribunal to take us to his brother’s grave. On his knees Javeed attempted to clear the thick brush. Later, in Srinagar, he testified that Bhat had never been involved in militancy. Javeed spoke of grieving, of imprisonment and beatings at the police station. He asked how he could have saved his brother from death.

After Sadiapora, we were stopped at Shangargund, Sopore, at about 6.40 pm, by three persons in civilian clothing. They forcibly boarded the car. We were ordered to the Sopore Police Station. There we were asked to detail our identity, employment, the purpose of the visit, and to hand over tapes which, the police alleged, contained ‘dangerous’ and ‘objectionable’ material. We stated that the Tribunal, a public process, was undertaking its work peaceably, lawfully, with informed consent, and that we had not visited restricted areas. We stated that the police had no lawful reason to seize the tapes. We were detained for 16 minutes.


After several calls to senior police persons, we were released. A red Indica car followed us to Sangrama. At Srinagar, Intelligence personnel were stationed at my hotel. On 21 June, I was followed from the hotel to the Tribunal’s office in Lal Chowk, where about 8 personnel were stationed the entire day questioning anyone who entered or left the office.

My mother, residing in Calcutta, received a query regarding my whereabouts from the District Magistrate’s Office. I was followed to the Srinagar airport on 22 June, and questioned, asked if I possessed dual citizenship. I do not. I am a citizen of India and a permanent resident of the United States. On 24 June, I arrived in Bhubaneswar to submit a statement to the Commission of Inquiry on the Kandhamal violence against Christians in 2007 in Orissa. There too, Central Intelligence officials persistently inquired after me. In April, after announcing the Tribunal, I was stopped and harassed at Immigration while leaving India for the United States, and again on my re-entry in June.

The targeting of the Tribunal has not abated since the Amarnath issue erupted around 23 June. The volatile proposal to transfer 800 kanals of land to the Shrine Board, revoked on 01 July, was supported by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu militant Shiv Sena. Despite the Sena’s recent call to Hindus to form suicide squads, it faces no sanctions from the state. Kashmiris of diverse ethnicities and religions dissented the Amarnath land transfer. Community leaders in Kashmir explained that their stance against the proposal is not in dissent to Hindu pilgrims, but a repressive state. During the Amarnath land transfer protests, civil disobedience paralleled that of 1989, amid severe repression. On 30 June, in curfew-like conditions, we met with two families in Srinagar who narrated that the police had shot dead their sons. At one place, in the old city, while the men took the body for burial late at night, the police returned and destroyed property and molested women.

On 30 June, at about 10:10 pm, Parvez Imroz and his family were attacked at home by state forces, who fired three shots and hurled a grenade while exiting when family and community interrupted their attempts. Neighbours reported seeing one large armoured vehicle and two Gypsy cars, and men in CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) and SOG (Special Operations Group) uniforms. This murder attempt is an escalation in the forms of state-led intimidation and targeting aimed at Advocate Imroz. It is an attempt to make the Tribunal vulnerable and instil fear in us in an attempt to stop this process.

On 01 July, we met at Khurram Parvez’s home before addressing a press conference. Outside, jeeps with plainclothes men continued their observation, accompanied by a jeep with armed men in uniform.

Later, Advocate Imroz, Khurram Parvez, Advocate Mihir Desai, and I went to the police station to lodge a First Information Report. We were not permitted to do so. For security reasons, Parvez Imroz is not staying at home. Khurram Parvez remains under surveillance.


I must allow for distance before revisiting the graves. On 04 July, sitting on a plane at Delhi International Airport, waiting to take-off, I received a phone call on my India mobile, caller ‘Unknown’: “Madam,we know you’re leaving. Think wisely before coming back”.


Orders to unnerve the leadership of the International Tribunal by the Government of India’s intelligence and security administration appear to be generated at the highest levels. The general policy of surveillance should not be used as a pretext to create obstacles for our work. As India argues for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, the Government of India, as ‘Frontline Defenders’ stated in their recent alert supporting the Tribunal, must adhere to its own repeated commitment to peace in Kashmir and international conventions and laws. It must uphold democratic governance and safeguard human rights.

Advocate Imroz, Khurram Parvez, other members of the Tribunal team, have long experienced injustices for their extraordinary work as human rights defenders. A lauded human rights lawyer, Parvez Imroz has survived two, now three, assassination attempts, the first from militants. Since 2005, his passport has been denied. Khurram Parvez lost his leg in a landmine incident. Gautam Navlakha and Zahir-ud-Din have been intimidated and threatened, as has Mihir Desai, in their larger work. It is noteworthy that the Government of India is adding intimidation to the death and rape threats delivered me by Hindu extremists for human rights work.

The work of the Tribunal is an act of conscience and accountability, fraught with the charge of complex and violent histories. Its mandate, in documenting Kashmir’s present, is to chronicle the fabric of militarisation, status of human rights, and legal, political, militaristic ‘states of exception’. The Tribunal’s work will continue through the coming months. We have received extensive solidarity from civil society; victims/survivors, at street corners, from villagers, ordinary citizens, those committed to justice. Each life in Kashmir has a story to tell. The subjugation of civil society has produced magnificent ethical resistance. The state cannot combat every individual.

European Parliament debate about Kashmir mass graves by Sarah Ludford

Nearly two decades of genocidal violence record 70,000+ dead, 8,000+ disappeared, 60,000+ tortured, 50,000+ orphaned,incalculable sexualised and gendered violence, a very high rate of people with suicidal behaviours; hundreds of thousands displaced; violations of promises, laws, conventions, agreements, treaties; mass graves; mile upon mile of barbed wire; fear, suppression of varied demands for participation to determine Kashmir’s future, spirals of violence, protracted silence. Last year, Kashmir’s only hospital with services for mental health received 68,000 patients. Profound social, economic, and psychological consequences,and an intense isolation have impacted private, public, and everyday life. It has generated brutal resistance on the part of groups that have engaged in violent militancy. Repressions of struggles for self-determination and internationalpolicies/politics have yielded severe consequences, creating a juncture at which the failure of governance intersects with a culture of grief.

Torture survivors, non-militants and former militants, that I met with testified to the sadism of the forces. Reportedly, a man, hung upside down, had petrol injected through his anus. Water-boarding,mutilation, rape of women, children, and men, starvation, psychological torture.

Brutalised, ‘healed’, to be brutalised again. An eagle tattoo on the arm of a man was reportedly identified by an army officer as a symbol of Pakistan-held Azad Kashmir, even as the man clarified the tattoo was from his childhood. The skin containing it was burned. The officer, the man stated, said: “When you look at this, think of azadi”. A mother, reportedly asked to watch her daughter’s rape by army personnel, pleaded for her release. They refused. She pleaded that she could not watch, asking to be sent out of the room or be killed. We were told that the soldier pointed a gun to her forehead, stating he would grant her wish, and shot her before they proceeded to rape the daughter. We also spoke with persons violated by militants. One man stated that people’s experiences with the reprehensible atrocities of militancy do not imply the abdication of their desire for self-determination. This, he stated, is a mistake the state makes, conflating militancy with the intent for self-determination.

He clarified that neither is self-determination an indication of allegiance to Pakistan, largely to the contrary.

The continuing and daunting presence of military and paramilitary forces, increased and sophisticated surveillance, merges with pervasive and immense suffering and anger of people in villages, towns, and cities across Kashmir. Parallel to the presence of 500,000 troops and commitment to nuclearisation, official figures state that there are about 450 militants in Kashmir and that demilitarisation is underway. In March 2007, three government committees on demilitarisation resolved that the ‘low intensity war continues’, placing in limbo troop reduction and the repealment of draconian laws -- the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958, imposed in Jammu and Kashmir in December 1990, and the Disturbed Areas Act, 1976, enacted in 1992. Local realities reflect that these laws and the military seek to control the general population with impunity.

Kashmir is increasingly defined as a ‘post-conflict’ zone. ‘Post-conflict’ is not the propagation of tourism toward an overt display of nationalism. Post-conflict is a space in which to heal, reflect, and enable civil society participation in determining peace and justice. The graves speak to those that listen. Those haunted by history are called to remember.

About Writer


(Dr Angana Chatterji is associate professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies and co-convener of the International People’s Tribunal in Kashmir. A shorter version of the article appeared in Tehelka magazine’s recent issue).


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GANG RAPE OF A CANADIAN TOURIST IN KASHMIR

Born in 1966, 24 year old Miss Loura Jane Lambie, a Canadian agricultural science student, was on a stroll on October 11th on the boulevard in Srinagar when it was just getting towards darkness. Near the Centaur Hotel, she was having a chat with three local boys asking them about what was going on in Kashmir and was immediately waylaid by personnel of the Indian National Security Guards (MSG) traveling in a white Maruti van. They were armed with automatic weapons and carried radios. One of them, tall but slim, warned Loura not to get into conversation with local Muslim youth. “All of them are very, very dangerous terrorists and can molest you in this desolate spot”, he told her.

When the guards asked her who she was, she replied “a Canadian”. “You shall have to accompany us to the police station” and thus Loura was asked to board the vehicle. Instead of any police station, Loura was taken to the Oberoi palace hotel where the Indian guards had a drink, from their own bottles because the hotel bar was closed. She did not drink even though she was invited to do so. Then guards then ordered her to board the vehicle again as they told her it was not safe for her to go back to the house boat at that late hour, for the Kashmiri militants could kill her at any spot. The guards also took away her purse. Loura was then taken to a garden near Chasma Shahi. It was 1 am on October 12th.

One of the guards directed Loura to undress but she did not oblige. Her clothes were torn and she was laid down on the ground and gang raped. She cried under the open sky but there was no one to listen to her moans and shrieks except the sleeping state governor, Girish Saxena, in Raj Bavan, which is situated only a few hundred yards from the scene of the incident. For a change, Loura was taken to another adjacent garden and the gang rape by five guards continued until finally she fell unconscious.
A semi conscious Loura was then dropped on the roadside, at a slight distance from where she had been picked up the previous evening. On being sighted by the locals, she was carried to the police station a Nehru Park where a case for kidnapping and rape was registered under sections 366 and 367 of the Rambir Penal Code under First Information Report No: 90/40. The police officer at the station recommended a medical examination of the victim and Loura was taken to Lal Ded Women’s hospital in Srinagar.

Two female doctors examined her ascertaining that dead sperms were found in her uterus and the passage leading to it. There were scratches on her thighs, arms and breasts, which testify that she resisted.

Loura Jane Lambie told pressmen that very day how brutally the security guards raped her. The matter when brought to higher authorities in the state and also when it was taken up with the government of India by the Canadian high commission in New Delhi, the state police registered the case against the guards, arresting two of them whom Loura had identified in a batch of sixty four guards paraded before her. She recognized them even though both of them had shaven of their beards.

Loura was kept in protective custody by the state authorities and was allowed an interview with the state governor on October 13th who promised stern action would be taken against the guards turned rapists.

The authorities acted swiftly in view of the Canadian government taking serious notice of the incident and it was in record time that an inquiry was conducted and the culprits punished.

Here lies the difference between the rape of a foreigner and that of a Muslim Kashmiri woman. The latter is treated as an allegation and passed of unnoticed and unwept.”

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The disappeared of Kashmir

Al Jazeera reports on the boys who never came home.

By Azad Essa

Ghulam Muhammad Wani's son disappeared 15 years ago, but his case is just one among thousands in Indian-administered Kashmir  [Azad Essa]

His unibrow twists and arches furiously. The creases on his face tighten. His eyes shift from the door and with his index finger he points towards the ceiling. Then he stares straight at me and begins to speak - his voice like a calamitous clap of thunder, echoing off the cold walls and ringing in my ears. I have no idea what he is saying, but his tone conveys everything. "Take it easy ... they are here to listen to your story ... don't be angry," says Parveena Ahangar, the chairperson of the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), one of two organisations going by the same name in Kashmir, as she tugs gently at the old man's knee. But he refuses and embarks on a second tirade; spitting as he pronounces a series of adjectives that I recognise as expletives. A friend who has accompanied me for the purpose of translating whispers: "I can't translate all of this. He is cursing just about everyone there is to possibly swear at." Ghulam Muhammad Wani needs a moment to clear his mind. I happily give him three. The 80-year-old is short and stocky but cuts an imposing figure. Dressed in a dirty, brown pheran, he sits on the floor of his living room in Rajbagh, Srinagar. His overstretched woolen socks loop around the contours of his feet, stealing dust from the parched carpet below. He tells us his story. A father's anguish On the evening of May 14, 1996, members of the counter-insurgent Ikhwan group, a pro-government militia made up of former insurgents, now working for the Indian army, knocked on his door and took off with this son, Imtiyaz Ahmed Wani. Suspected of being an insurgent, a separatist fighting for freedom from the Indian state, Imtiyaz disappeared without trace. After searching from pillar to post, visiting police stations and army officers, Wani went to the State Human Rights Commission to file a complaint about his missing son. Finding no joy there, he sold a property, took out a loan and paid a seemingly sympathetic counter-insurgent who promised information about his missing son. But the money, like his son, disappeared. "My son was a gardener at the forest department, earning Rs 2,000 ($45) a month; he did no wrong," Wani finally offers. "It has been 15 years," he trails off. During his desperate search for Imtiyaz, a policeman from the Special Task Force (a counter-insurgency wing of the Jammu and Kashmir police force) came to his house and offered him 1,200 rupees ($30) as piecemeal compensation. Over time, Wani was also approached by politicians offering him "aid" in exchange for his silence. "I told them to leave ... it would have been like accepting blood money. "They robbed me of my son, who will now bury me when I go?" Wani asks the silent room. Imtiyaz's disappearance is just one of many in Indian-administered Kashmir since the beginning of the insurgency there in 1989. Unofficial estimates suggest that over the past two decades, between 8,000 and 10,000 young men have disappeared. Click here to read one family's tale of losing a son Buried Evidence, a report published by the International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir (IPTK) in 2009, reported the number to be "8,000 plus". It is a figure disputed by the Indian government and SM Sahai, the chief of police in Kashmir, says it is grossly exaggerated. "This number is not correct, and most of the missing persons are fighters who crossed [the] border into Pakistan, and are still there," he says. Human rights activists say the government has repeatedly released contradictory figures, indicating a lack of seriousness in addressing the issue. "One day, they say it is 3,931 people missing, the next day it is 3,749 ... they are not serious about it," says Parvez Imroz, a human rights activist and co-founder of the original Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP). Zahir-ud-Din, a local journalist whose investigation into disappearances in Kashmir culminated in a book, Did they vanish in thin air, concurs that the state has marginalised the issue. One can even pick up on it from the language employed - 'missing' as opposed to 'disappearance', ud-Din says. A familiar story An illustration by Kashmiri cartoonist Malik Sajad Following the partition of India and Pakistan, and the latter's attempt to capture the valley, Kashmir was split into an Indian-administered Kashmir, a Pakistan-administered Kashmir and, later, a Chinese territory, which is mostly uninhabited. Ever since, India and Pakistan have used the territory to exercise bitter foreign policy towards each other, culminating in three wars. While self-determination has always been a project in Indian-administered Kashmir, it took a rigged election in 1988 to prompt a call to arms against the Indian government's rule of the region; young men ventured into Pakistan-administered Kashmir for training in guerrilla warfare. India responded with a military campaign to suppress the insurgency, resulting in an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 deaths, and Kashmir became one of the most militarised places on earth, with more than half-a-million Indian troops deployed to the region. To help put this into perspective it is worth noting that at the height of the occupation of Iraq in 2008, foreign troops there numbered 250,000. Kashmiri novelist Mirza Waheed says that young men did go to Pakistan, and that many did not return, but insists the story has always been bigger than that. "There have been numerous cases of custodial deaths, torture, illegal detention, extra-judicial killings, also known as 'fake-encounters', and they cannot be brushed away," he says. Widespread and systematic The APDP, co-founded by Imroz and Ahangar before they each formed their respective associations, has long argued that disappearances in the valley have been purposefully systematic. Ahangar has not seen her son Javed since he was picked up by security forces 17 years ago. Since the early days of the APDP, she has acted as a pillar of strength for parents seeking comfort and advice in dealing with their lingering loss. Ud-Din says that numbers have always been difficult to verify, but that disappearances are widespread. "When people started disappearing [in the 1990s] we thought that they might have died accidentally due to torture. But thousands of people cannot disappear accidentally. It happens with a design." Imroz concurs that while the rate of disappearances may have slowed over the past decade, "it was a phenomenon" that is yet to be solved, with perpetrators that are yet to face justice. "Both combatants and non-combatants were picked up from home, from the roads, from just about anywhere and taken to detention centres. Their fate was often not known," he says. "Enforced disappearances is one of the many repressive measures (like killings, illegal detentions etc.) aimed at breaking the resolve of people," says Athar Parvaiz, a journalist based in Srinagar. Disappearances fit into a larger theme of human rights violations in Kashmir. In late March 2011, Amnesty International (AI) released a report claiming that the "state of Jammu and Kashmir was holding hundreds of people without charge or trial in order to keep them out of circulation". AI alleges that a contentious Public Safety Act (PSA) allows security forces to detain individuals when the state has insufficient evidence for a trial. Through this law, AI says that between 8,000 and 20,000 people have been detained over the past two decades, with 322 people held between January and September 2010. Click here to read more about the laws that enable the armed forces in Indian-administered Kashmir to side-step human rights conventions Through this law, AI says that between 8,000 and 20,000 people have been detained over the past two decades, with 322 people held between January and September 2010. Govind Acharya, an AI India specialist, stresses that while detentions through the PSA can last for up to two years, and therefore pale in comparison to enforced disappearances, the numbers are ominously similar. "The number of disappearances and the number of PSA detentions cited are coincidental, but the number of both are in the thousands. Some of the PSA detainees became victims of enforced disappearances and some did not," Acharya explains, adding that forced disappearances are forbidden under international law and that the "PSA is a form of legalised forced disappearance". But disappearances and detentions are not the only ways in which human rights are undermined in Kashmir. In late 2010, a US cable released by whistleblower website WikiLeaks reported that the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) had briefed US diplomats on widespread torture in Indian jails in Kashmir and their frustration with the Indian government's failure to address their concerns. In 2009, the Allard Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School reported that "the pattern of legal breakdowns in Kashmir violates basic tenets of international human rights law" and that "research indicates that India fails to meet its international obligations in Kashmir". Worse still, is the report's damning assessment of the "Indian government's disregard [for] its own standards governing detention". "[It] refuses to honour court orders quashing detention, and exploits procedural impediments to avoid presenting detainees in court," the report states. The WikiLeaks cable adds that "detainees were rarely militants, but persons connected to or believed to have information about the insurgency". Psychological torture Imroz says that the real tragedy of disappearance can be found in the families whose lives it disrupts forever. "Most of those who disappeared were noncombatants ... and consider how many people are directly affected by the ordeal of a loved one disappearing. "If a family member dies, you mourn and are forced to move on, but when someone 'disappears' the entire family, community is disrupted emotionally and psychologically; they all join the search. When does it end?" he asks. It is natural that intermittent curfews, perpetual gun battles, midnight raids and disappeared family members should place a strain on this society of barbed wire and sandbags, but ud-Din says it amounts to something more like torture. Click here to read one mother's story about losing her son "It is torturous. Perpetual trauma has gone to their head. Most of them have become psychiatric patients. The half widows [as the wives of the disappeared are known] are the worst hit. They cannot go for second marriage, they cannot inherit from their husband's estate, and nobody accepts them as widows. Most of them have been turned out by the in-laws," he says. "It is a huge disruption to the society," Imroz adds. "Consider children who have lost their father and breadwinner and are taken out of school, and become child labour ... or are refused entry into an orphanage because there is no certification of death, or the complications in sharing property because there is no certainty of anything," he continues. 'Discipline and death' It is little wonder then that the IPTK report postulates that the governance of Indian-administered Kashmir has taken on the techniques of 'discipline and death' as modes of social control, with the objective of "assimilat[ing] Kashmir into its territory". This use of discipline and death as a regulatory mechanism has left Kashmiri society traumatised, existing in virtual limbo. But Waheed says that it would be erroneous to label Kashmiris as victims lacking agency, even though they have been victims of a brutal military suppression, or to ignore the fact that any society would devise coping mechanisms in the face of such trauma. "There is no dichotomy between being traumatised and resilient. A brutalised people have no choice but to be resilient, in all kinds of ways. A mother whose nine-year-old son was bludgeoned to death last summer - what can she do other than grieve or protest? Both require resilience. "Kashmir has an extremely high incidence of psychological trauma. Depression is quite common. But what do you expect in a place where people have been incessantly brutalised for more than 20 years? I have seen and heard uncommon acts of bravery and dignity in the face of suffering and tragedy," Waheed says. Click here to read about the resolve of the Kashmiri people While not disputing this resilience, Parvez says that there is a lack of institutional and societal support for those suffering from this type of trauma. "The MSF [Médecins Sans Frontières] have trauma counselling, and they have worked with the APDP, but there is still a lack of institutional recognition of the issue." Parvaiz agrees, adding that putting aside the romanticism of a resilient society, "the two-decade [long] conflict and mis-governence over the years have wrought havoc on Kashmir … [affecting] the social fabric of the society [while] insecurity [about the] future reflects in their social behaviour as well". Impunity reigns supreme It would appear that part of the problem is that the Indian government refuses to acknowledge enforced disappearance as the scourge that it is in Indian-administered Kashmir. For the past 10 years, both versions of the APDP have assembled every month - on different days - in a Srinagar park to bemoan the lack of justice and the lack of government action in addressing the issue. Imroz says that not only is the Indian government refusing to offer an explanation for the disappearances, but that they are not willing to address the mass complainants either. The IPTK report, which Imroz co-authored, documents an investigation of 2,700 graves in 55 villages and three districts in Indian-administered Kashmir between 2005 and 2009. The numbers are staggering: 2,373 graves were found unmarked, 151 graves contained more than one body; while 23 graves held between three and 17 bodies. The study noted that mass graves have always been a tell-tale sign of crimes against humanity or genocide. But Sahai, the police chief, says the mass graves belong to fallen foreign fighters and reveal little about disappearances. Authorities often claim that unmarked graves are those of fighters from Pakistan, the study notes, adding that such rhetoric conflates "cross border militancy with present nonviolent struggles by local Kashmiris for political and territorial self-determination". Acharya says the crux of the issue can be explained in one word - "impunity". "Victims of human rights violations from all sides of the conflict can expect very little from the Indian state or Jammu and Kashmir." Through the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), Indian forces engaged in various violations are often protected from prosecution. Sahai insists people should report disappearances. "If people have such complaints, we want them to compile a list of those missing and then we can conduct a thorough investigation. The fact that Amnesty International operates in the valley is testament to the fact that we are open to investigations," he says. Click here to read an interview with the chief of police The Indian government has allowed the UN special rapporteur on minorities and the UN special rapporteur on human rights defenders to visit Indian-administered Kashmir, but has refused to allow the UN working group on arbitrary detention or the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions access. Crucially, the UN working group on enforced and involuntary disappearances has also been denied entry, despite its requests to conduct investigations in the territory. When quizzed on this, Sahai pleads the fifth, saying: "It is difficult for me to comment on this because this issue is of a high diplomatic status." Acharya says that "given the regular visits of others' rapporteurs, it does seem to be a glaring omission" and adds that while AI did manage to meet GS Pillai, the Indian home minister, to discuss their latest report, gaining an audience with the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister, Omar Abdulla, was proving to be quite a task. Imroz says that the process for reporting a family member's disappearance is layered in bureaucracy, but that a screening committee, which is meant to investigate disappearances, does exist. "If a family is able to prove to the screening committee that a family member has disappeared for more than seven years, the matter is taken to the local council and district magistrate and eventually they are able to receive ex gratia relief money of around $2,000. "But if the family member suddenly returns, they will have to repay the money." Imroz says around 500 families have received this amount. "There are families who need the relief money, but normally victim's families want justice, and this procedure, which does not even work properly, does not bring the perpetrators to book. "In principle, we do not promote the extra gratia relief, because we want justice, and this is not justice, but to say that lists of names need to be brought in and something will happen is inaccurate. "Police often file these disappearances as 'missing' and often the law is not followed, whereby an active search is meant to take place. The files just get lost." In a similar vein, Imroz says that although the IPTK report was released in 2009, they are still waiting for Abdulla to respond. Al Jazeera also found little success when approaching the chief minister's office for comment. Kashmir has always been a sensitive issue, but if anything, the human rights violations in the valley are only emblematic of the Indian state's selective observance of international treaties on human rights. Human Rights Watch (HRW) has regularly castigated India for violations in the north-eastern state of Manipur, where the AFSPA has cultivated a culture of impunity for the security forces. In the late 1980s and the 1990s, Indian counter-insurgency tactics in Punjab included the use of enforced disappearances, extra-judicial executions and mass cremations. This is perhaps the reason why India has signed - but not ratified - the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance that came into being at the end of 2010. The convention effectively outlaws enforced disappearance, making states accountable and effectively turning systematic disappearance into a crime against humanity. AI is categorical in their acknowledgement that every country has a right to defend itself, but insists that enforced disappearance can never be tenable. "India does have a robust procedure for dealing with terrorism, as seen from the trial of Ajmal Kasab, the sole survivor of the Mumbai attacks in 2008," Acharya argues. "[However] the Jammu and Kashmir government is bypassing the judicial system and imposing arbitrary punishment based on very broad categories by government agents, rather than the judiciary." Sahai disputes this, saying: "This idea that we [Jammu and Kashmir] have a whole new set of rules and that there is no accountability is wrong; we follow the law like other states and places in India. Kashmir is a disturbed area and often human rights groups are used as tools of propaganda by separatists. If our human rights organ[isations] are compiling figures and our judiciary exists to protect the people, what is the need for AI to investigate?" But Imroz argues that state institutions have very little power in the face of the AFSPA. With the judiciary unable to act and the State Human Rights Commission unable to punish, the armed forces have effective legal impunity. To talk about legal devices protecting the people of Indian-administered Kashmir is null and void because of the special status enjoyed by the armed forces there. Imroz says the tragedy becomes further complicated when one notes how Indian civil society, though vibrant, "has abandoned Kashmir from mainstream discourse together with the Indian media". The harrowing tales of thousands of disappeared people, the broken homes and the daily travails of life in Indian-administered Kashmir are missing from the popular imagination of most Indians. Instead, the narrative begins and ends as Kashmir, the elusive paradise overrun by Pakistani jihadists with Kalashnikovs; not ordinary people torn by a decades-long conflict, a disproportionate military campaign and gross human rights abuses. The Kashmiri people are virtually anonymous in the telling of their own stories. This is partly why ud-Din believes that families nursing broken homes due to the disappearance of fathers or sons need closure. "While interviewing the former minister of state for home in 1999, I urged him to declare all the disappeared persons dead, [as] according to me [this] is the only way out. This alone would end the unending search and the sufferings of the aggrieved relatives. However, the minister refused for obvious reasons," he says. New generation: New questions "The new generation is asking questions ... the new generation is less afraid to speak up," Imroz says. "[They] realise that they have to get past the rhetoric; rise above it. Kashmiri civil society is slowly rising, and [is] part of the problem and the solution, and it's up to them to deem what is unacceptable." This is a view shared by Acharya, who says the affected families must keep pushing government officials to heed their calls for justice. "Organisations like Amnesty International can only shed light on a few cases and hope that the other cases will get resolved as well. But, it's hard not to be pessimistic about the prospects of justice. "Of course, as a human rights activist, I'd recommend that the Jammu and Kashmir government take steps to repeal laws like the PSA and the AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) that give immunity from prosecution of human rights violations, to initiate steps towards prosecuting human rights violators and to ensure that the state does not violate economic, social and cultural rights of those affected by repeated curfews and checkpoints that make seeking an adequate livelihood so difficult." But these calls are unlikely to be heard by the Indian authorities - at least not in the near future. And while justice might go some way toward healing wounds and advancing closure, it is unlikely to bring Ghulam Wani's son home or to ease this father's anguish. For now, his only recourse is to refuse to pay for electricity, water and other services – withholding a few coins from the state in protest against a silent war.

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THE STREET VENDOR WHO NEVER CAME HOME

Mohammed Syed Tambaco disappeared in Kashmir in 1992 after going to play cricket with friends.

By Azad Essa 

Noora is a widow who had two sons. Her eldest son, Mohammed Syed Tambaco was a street vendor who sold cheap electrical appliances on the sidewalk of his neighbourhood in Srinagar to provide for his family. On the morning of February 24, 1992, the 28-year-old left his home to play cricket at a nearby ground, but when he did not return home with the other young men from the area Noora became worried and asked his friends about his whereabouts. They said that Mohammed had left the ground much earlier, after bowling just a few balls. A shopkeeper at a store near to the ground said that he had seen a young man being bundled into a military jeep. The family lodged a First Information Report (FIR) at a local police station. They looked for Mohammed at Papa 2, the then infamous torture centre, and at other military and police detention centres and prisons, but they found no trace of him. After a difficult year-and-a-half they gave up actively searching. With their sole breadwinner gone, the family faced severe economic hardships. Noora had to rent most of the rooms in her house out, leaving just the kitchen for the family to sleep in. Mohammad had been married for a year-and-a-half and had a five month old son when he disappeared. Contrary to traditional practise in Kashmir, where half widows, as the wives of the disappeared are known, are unable to marry for years on end, Mohammed's wife remarried a year-and-a-half later - taking her son to live in her second husband's home. While the family is now split, Noora's former daughter-in-law tries to maintain some contact with Mohammed's family. Like his older brother, Noora's youngest son became a street vendor. He is now married with three children and tries to support his family of six on just 3,000 rupees (about $70) a month. Noora says that she does not expect her son to ever return, but just the faintest hope that he might makes it hard to attain emotional closure. Source: Al Jazeera

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BJP gets its own interlocutors for Kashmir

Former BJP President Rajnath Singh

Not happy with the work of the government-appointed panel of interlocutors on Kashmir, the opposition Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has announced the launch of a parallel four-month-long dialogue mission for restoring peace in Jammu and Kashmir.

Former BJP President Rajnath Singh will lead this team, which will include four other senior BJP leaders: Ravi Shankar Prasad, Shahnawaz Hussain, Maya Singh and JK Jain. They will present the report of the group in the Lok Sabha to pressure the government for taking action on it.

Party spokesperson Hussain, who is also in the committee, said that the members will visit the state from time to time to engage various sections of the society into a dialogue for a credible solution. He said that such a solution cannot come from the government-sponsored dialogue process.

The team will first make two-day visit to Jammu and then travel to Srinagar. It will send invites to both mainstream political parties and separatists, besides talking to people from different walks of life, including lawyers, social activists and educationists.

“We welcome various shades of opinion in Kashmir, including the separatists, for unconditional talks within the ambit of the Indian constitution,” said BJP national general secretary Jagat Prakash Nadda, who is also in-charge of this team.

Ironically, when some members of an all-party delegation that visited the Kashmir valley last September had deviated from the schedule to meet separatist leaders, the BJP had criticised them.

Nadda said that the BJP wants to get feedback from Kashmir and put across the ground realities and genuine aspirations of the people to the entire country. He said that the separatists groups of valley, political parties in coalition government as well as the civil society groups are welcome to be the part of the study group. “We will hear the separatists, the PDP, the National Conference and other groups,” he maintained.

Interestingly, the BJP leader described Jammu and Kashmir issue as a “political problem”, saying that it needs a “political solution”.

Iftikhar Gilani is a Special Correspondent with Tehelka.com.
iftikhar@tehelka.com

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Heavy-handed Kashmir police take lessons in how not to kill

After 114 unarmed protesters die, securityforces are desperate to improve their image

By Andrew Buncombe in Srinagar

Sunday, 10 April 2011

AP

Police try on new armour during riot training at Sujwan camp, near Jammu, Kashmir

On a large parade ground set beneath dry brown hills, the Kashmir police went about their business. On one side, officers dressed in normal clothes and waving banners, imitated a gang of protesters. On the other, their colleagues, kitted out in new riot gear, selected for its menacing look as much as its flexibility, jogged forwards, chanting. Quickly, the kitted-out officers lowered themselves into a kneeling position and as those in the centre raised their shields, the officers on the flanks set off after the "demonstrators", waving their truncheons and hitting out. Afterwards, purple-coloured water was fired from a cannon.

Senior officers say the aim of these training sessions – which The Independent on Sundaywas the first international media outlet invited to attend – was to avoid causing serious harm when police clash with real protesters. In Kashmir, where a decades-long struggle for autonomy and the subsequent security clampdown has led to the deaths of more than 70,000 people, protests by youths demanding "azadi" or freedom are nothing new.

But last summer's demonstrations were met with what many believe was unnecessarily heavy-handed tactics by the police, and at least 114 unarmed civilians were killed. There has been mounting pressure on the authorities to devise a non-lethal strategy.

As a result, more than 3,000 officers are being pushed through a rolling programme of sessions on the use of water cannons, crowd dispersal, and the safe discharge of tear gas shells. There has been expenditure on new equipment for officers previously using crowd-control gear based on British-era designs. "We have tried to give our people knowledge about how to disperse crowds without harming them," said R A Vakil, commander of the Jammu and Kashmir force's 6th Battalion. "We want to reduce deaths."

But on the streets, these efforts have already been met with derision. The training sessions have coincided with a crackdown on Kashmiri youths using draconian laws that have sent scores of people to jail without trial. Anger is mounting.

Among those venting their rage is Showakat Mattoo. Last summer, the death of his 17-year-old nephew, Tufail – killed by a teargas shell that struck him on the head – was the spark that set off months of demonstrations. The boy's family insist he was an innocent passer-by and have demanded the police charge the officer responsible.

"This was on 9 June last year and they have done nothing. They even have an eye-witness," said Mr Mattoo, sitting crouched over a basket containing burning embers at his Srinagar home. "This talk of non-lethal training is just rubbish. It's just eye-wash."

It is not hard to find such anger. In the aftermath of last year's demonstrations, the authorities said they would release the youths who had been detained. Yet reports suggest many hundreds remain in custody. The police admit 110 youths have been held under the Public Safety Act (PSA), a piece of legislation whose origins date from the days of British rule that allows someone to be detained for up to two years without trial on the say-so of a magistrate. A family's only recourse is to appeal to the High Court.

Among the more notorious PSA cases – laughable were it not so serious – is that of Omar Hamid Hanga, an 18-year-old arrested in February and accused of beating a police officer who had fallen to the ground at a demonstration last summer. The piece of evidence cited by the police is a photograph that shows several youths beating the officer. But the face of the boy purported to be Mr Hanga is entirely concealed by a mask.

His family insist the two boys look entirely unalike and that he was not even in the town where the incident happened. Their pleas were ignored. "The authorities are not willing to listen to people," said the teenager's uncle, Abdul Masjid, as his wife sobbed.

Ferdousa Zargar's 19-year-old son, Asif, was also detained under the PSA. 'There was no trial. He was accused of stone throwing," said Mrs Zargar, a widow who lives in Srinagar's old quarter. "I was looking to him to raise our family." Her son is currently being held in a jail in the north of the state. A senior police officer, Abdul Gani Mir, defended the use of the PSA. "There are proper checks and balances," he said.

Amnesty International does not agree. In a report, it said up to 20,000 people had been detained using the PSA in the past two decades. "Kashmir authorities are using PSA detentions as a revolving door to keep people they can't or won't convict through proper legal channels locked up and out of the way," said Amnesty's Sam Zarifi. The chief minister has said the report's recommendations will be "seriously considered".

But it is hard to find anyone in this city who has much good to say about the police or their vow to try to reduce casualties. The protesters' demands for freedom have in recent years started to include demands for justice and accountability. Why are no police or paramilitaries, they ask, ever charged when they commit a crime?

Such polarisation means there is little chance for goodwill unless people see concrete action as well. The federal authorities in Delhi have long dragged their heels over a political solution for the people of the valley. Last year they appointed three "interlocutors" to sound out various factions but undermined the deed by selecting three well-informed but politically powerless individuals. As it is, the interlocutors have also raised concerns about the use of the PSA.

Yasin Malik, a former militant who turned to non-violence nearly two decades ago and who heads the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, one of several groups demanding autonomy, lives near Lal Chowk, the area in Srinagar notorious as a location for protests. Last year, one of his cousins was among those killed. "They need to start a discourse," he said, mockingly. "Instead they are trying to decide whether to beat me with a plastic bar or an iron bar."

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France begins ban on niqab and burqa

PARIS As I write this blog, a young woman from the Paris suburb of Aulnay-sous-Bois is breaking the law. Even while she is dropping off her three-year-old at nursery she is breaking the law.

For from today the wearing of full-face veils in France is banned. Overnight the woman from the suburb has become a dissenter. She says no law should tell her what she can't wear. She also believes that her faith trumps French law, and therein lies her problem in an avowedly secular French Republic.

Failure to obey the law could lead to a 150-euro (£133, $217) fine and being sent to citizenship classes. A criminal record might follow.

Perhaps, most significantly, anyone found forcing a woman to cover her face risks a 30,000-euro fine.

The burka or niqab is worn by very few in France - perhaps 2,000 women. The Muslim population is estimated at five million. Today - most probably - a few women will be defiant. Protesters against the new law are set to gather close to the flying buttresses of Notre Dame cathedral.

The police have orders to be restrained and respectful. The niqab-wearers, if any show up, will probably today be handed a leaflet. The authorities have printed 400,000 with the message that "the Republic lives with its face uncovered". A few women will see themselves as martyrs for a cause and already have their eye on the European Court of Human Rights. A businessman has offered to pick up any fines.

This law is about putting down a marker. As I have written before, many European leaders now believe that multiculturalism can lead to parallel, segregated communities. A new emphasis is being placed on minority communities integrating into the society they join, rather than just living as they did before. So Western societies are becoming more assertive about the values they uphold and the ones they expect others to respect.

Jean-Francois Cope, the French MP who has taken a lead over the burka ban, argues that seeing someone's face is key to human beings understanding each other. He sees the law as a step against separation.

The Muslim community is divided. It is made up of many voices and many views. Some believe it is important to become part of modern France. Some support the ban. Some don't. Some Muslim women wear headscarves. Many don't. Some believe that the Koran calls for a woman's face to be covered. Others say that such teachings appear in the works of scholars, not the Koran itself. There are Muslim women running companies; there are those discouraged from leaving their houses. Some wear dark headscarves, some are brightly coloured. A few hide their faces, while others are comfortable with heavy eye-liner and bright lipstick.

Ultimately this is an argument between those who believe that living in France demands that you sign up to certain French values and those who say that tolerance should allow you to dress how you want and to respect religious diversity.

The law is likely to be largely symbolic. There will be few prosecutions and it will be difficult to prove that a woman is being forced to wear a niqab because of her husband or family. Over time some women will choose not to wear it. Some shops stocking the niqab already say they will discontinue stocking it.

I suspect that this ban will generate a vibrant debate between Muslims. There are indications it has started already. Some say that the full-face veil is not a religious statement. It is purely cultural. Others say that it belongs to a strand of Islam. Others say that the wearing of headscarves is about asserting identity in a Western Europe that can still be frosty towards outsiders. Within traditional families there are daily arguments about how to live in a society that offers so much choice. Freedom can split families, as it has done with other religions.

What the French authorities want to avoid, at all costs, is a confrontation which could turn a debate about the covering of faces into whether the Muslim community is being singled out for special treatment.

By Gavin Hewitt BBC

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The Kashmir You Need To Know

History

Location:

The State of Jammu and Kashmir encompasses a mountainous region in the heart of Asia, with borders touching to both South and Central Asia. Surrounded by Pakistan, India, China and Afghanistan.  

Area:   

86,000 square miles, more than three times the size of the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium combined. Bigger than 87 member countries of the United Nations.   

Population: 

Estimated 13 million, including 1.5 million refugees in Pakistan and 0.5 million expatriates in different parts of the world. Larger than 114 sovereign nations 

Background: 

Technically, the area is called The State of Jammu and Kashmir, and has been historically independent, except in the anarchical conditions of the late 18th and the first half of the 19th century or when incorporated in the vast empires set up by the Mauryas (3rd century BC), the Mughals (16th to 18th centuries) and the British (mid-19th to mid-20th centuries). 

Cause Of Dispute:

In 1846, the British colonial rulers of India sold the territory, including its populace (by a sale deed called the Treaty of Amritsar, in return for a sum of money) to a Hindu warlord who had no roots there. This warlord who bought himself into royalty, styled the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir.  The acts of brutality during his regime have left bitter memories, some of which persist to this present day. Several mosques were closed and occupied by his forces. The slaughtering of a cow was declared a crime punishable by death. Between 1925 and 1947 Maharajah Hari Singh continued this policy of discrimination against the 94 percent Muslim majority. It was nearly 65 years ago, in 1931, that the people of Kashmir made their first organised protest against Maharajah Hari Singh's cruelty. That led to the "Quit Kashmir" campaign against the Maharajah in 1946, and eventually to the Azad Kashmir movement which gained momentum a year later. The first armed encounter between the Maharajah's troops and insurgent forces occurred in August 1947. At this time, Britain was liquidating its empire in the subcontinent. Faced with a insurgency of his people,strengthened by a few hundred civilian volunteers from Pakistan, Maharajah fled to Jammu on 25th October 1947. In Jammu, after he ascertained a commitment of military assistance from the government of India to crush the impending revolution in Kashmir, he signed the "Instrument of Accession" to India. Lord Mountbatten conditionally accepted the "Instrument of Accession" on behalf of the British Crown, and furthermore, outlined the conditions for official acceptance in a letter dated 27th October 1947: "In consistence with their policy that in the case of any (native) state where the issue of accession has been subject of dispute, the question of accession should be decided in accordance with the wishes of the people of the state, it is my government's wish that as soon as law and order have been restored in Kashmir and her soil cleared of the invaders the question of state's accession should be settled by a reference to the people." Then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, in a speech aired on All­India Radio (2nd November 1947), reaffirmed the Indian Government's commitment to the right of the Kashmiri people to determine their own future through a plebiscite: "We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given, and the Maharajah has supported it, not only to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, but also to the world. We will not and cannot back out of it. We are prepared when peace and law have been established to have a referendum held under international auspices like the United Nations. We want it to be a fair and just reference to the people and we shall accept their verdict." The Government of India accepted the "Instrument of accession" conditionally, promising the people of the state and the world at large that "accession" would be final only after the wishes of the people of the state were ascertained upon return of normalcy in the state.  .Following this, India moved her forces into Srinagar and a drawn­out fight ensued between Indian forces and the forces of liberation. The forces of Azad Kashmir successfully resisted India's armed intervention and liberated one­third of the State. Realising it could not quell the resistance, India brought the issue to the United Nations Security Council in January 1948. As the rebel forces had undoubtedly been joined by volunteers from Pakistan, India charged Pakistan with having sent "armed raiders" into the state, and demanded that Pakistan be declared an aggressor in Kashmir. Furthermore, India demanded that Pakistan stop aiding freedom fighters, and allowing the transit of tribesmen into the state. After acceptance of these demands, coupled with the assurance that all "raiders" were withdrawn, India would enable a plebiscite to be held under impartial auspices to decide Kashmir's future status. In reply, Pakistan charged India with having manoeuvred the Maharajah's accession through "fraud and violence" and with collusion with a "discredited" ruler in the repression of his people. Pakistan's counter complaint was also coupled with the proposal of a plebiscite under the supervision and control of the United Nations to settle the dispute. The Security Council exhaustively discussed the question from January until April of 1948. It came to the conclusion that it would be impossible to determine responsibility for the fighting and futile to blame either side. Since both parties desired that the question of accession should be decided through an impartial plebiscite, the Council developed proposals based on the common ground between them. These were embodied in the resolution of 21st April 1948, envisaging a cease­fire, the withdrawal of all outside forces from the State, and a plebiscite under the control of an administrator who would be nominated by the Secretary General. For negotiating the details of the plan, the Council constituted a five­member commission known as "United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan" (UNCIP) to implement the resolution. After the cease­fire, India began efforts to drag the issue down, and under various pretexts tried to stop the UN resolution from being implemented. To this day, India pursues the same plan, and the resolution of 1948 has yet to be realised. India and Pakistan were at war over Kashmir from 1947­48 and all early U. N. Security Council Resolutions contained admonishment for both countries demanding an immediate case­fire, which would be followed by a-UN directed Plebiscite. However, disregarding that some fifteen resolutions were passed by the United Nations to this very effect, India and Pakistan again initiated military skirmish in 1965. At this point, another cease­fire agreement was effected after United Nations intervention, followed by an agreement at Tashkent with the good offices of the USSR.In 1971, India and Pakistan once again became locked in war. Efforts to bring the latest conflict to an end resulted in the Simla Agreement and was signed by both India and Pakistan and declared commitment to reach a "final settlement" on the Kashmir issue, but this has yet to happen.

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