PKM Report on Human Rights Violations of Minority Community in Kashmir

Panun Kashmir Movement (PKM) has submitted to the National Human Rights Commission a comprehensive report on Human Rights violations of the minority community in Kashmir during the last six years. The report, fourth in the series of memoranda presented by PKM to the Commission, was released in New Delhi on January 23, 1996.

Commenting editorially on the report, the Hindustan Times (29 1.96) says that it "presents a serious indictment not just of the terrorist elements in the Valley but also the discrimination practised by the State". About hundreds of communally targetted cases of "murder, arson, loot and rape", the editorial observes that "though several of these cases had been reported in the media off and on, it is for the first time that they have been documented in such detail".

Referring to the atrocities perpetrated by the State Government, the editorial observes: "the most damning part of the report, however, is not about the atrocities committed by the terrorist groups but some of the policies practised by the State administration. The report, for example, lists specific cases where the State administration having itself assessed loss to property incurred by the affected people, followed it up by making relief payments at rates that varied vastly from person to person displaying blatant communal bias. The victims belonging to the victim community were paid relief at rates as low as fifty per cent of the assessed amount while the State's majority community assessees were compensated to the tune of 200 percent and above. Much more than the money paid by way of relief was involved here. It exposes the State administration to the charge of discrimination on the basis of religion as well as violation of the constitutional guarantee of equality before law. It is amazing how such violations of the fundamentals of a secular and democratic State could have escaped the notice of successive Governors, and even the Union Home Ministry. Urgent correction of such aberrant policies is called for in order to restore confidence of all sections of the population in the justness of the State administration. The very fact that there had been so little effort at self-correction by the State so far placed an additional burden on the National Human Rights Commission which had been approached for relief by the PKM on behalf of the affected population".

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Courtesy: February 1996 Koshur Samachar