Kashmir: a paradise turned into hell

Repression and state terrorism has turned Kashmir into a hell that would stretch Dante’s imagination. After suffering death and destruction for four decades from 1948 to 1988, valiant Kashmiris started armed struggle and at least 80000 Kashmiris have laid down their lives, and still they are determined to take their struggle to the logical conclusion. There are some parallelism between Kashmir, Palestine and Bosnia so far as genocide of the Muslims is concerned. The Kashmir dispute, however, is different in a way that it was India that took the matter to the UN under Chapter VI of the UN Charter, which deals with Pacific Settlement of Disputes. The Security Council then passed the resolution on January 5, 1949 stating, “The question of the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan would be decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite.”

However, it was due to apathy of the international community that it did not persuade India to implement the UNSC resolution. Nevertheless, the issue is alive in the UN records, and unless it is resolved there cannot be a durable peace in the region. It is heartening to note that the European parliament has recently debated on mass graves in Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) during the plenary session in Strasbourg, France. And passed the resolution which reads: “Hundreds of unidentified graves have been discovered since 2006 in Jammu and Kashmir and human rights violations committed by the armed forces of India continue in an atmosphere of impunity.” It called upon the Indian government to “urgently ensure independent and impartial investigations into all suspected sites of mass graves in Jammu and Kashmir and as an immediate first step to secure the grave sites in order to preserve the evidence.”