120 Whither Kashmir? (Part II) - Islamabad Policy Research Institute

16 IPRI Factfile
terror by neglecting the legitimate rights of Kashmiris, has continuously
been trying to convince the US-led international community through
propaganda that the Kashmiri freedom fighters or Mujahideen are
terrorists, while accusing that Pakistan is sponsoring this cross-border
terrorism.
It is mentionable that those who sympathise with the cause of
Palestinians, Afghans and Iraqis regard the people of Kashmir as fighting
a war of national liberation. They equate the military actions and targeted
killing of the innocent people by the Indian occupying forces with
terrorism. On the other side, reactive ambush tactics of the freedom
fighters in these territories are called by the colonial authorities as
terrorism.
At present, Indian military troops are using all inhuman tactics of
ethnic cleansing to disturb the majority population of the Kashmiris,
which had been practised by the Serb forces on Bosnian and Kosovar
Muslims in the past and recently by Israel on the Palestinians.
When Indian military troops destroy a village and conduct
extrajudicial killings in the occupied territories of Kashmir, west remains
silent, for it is an internal affair of Indians, but when freedom fighters
seek retaliation, it becomes a case of terrorism. Recently more than 2,700
unmarked graves of the unidentified bodies were uncovered in villages of
Indian-held Kashmir near the Line of Control (LoC). It is not the new
event, in the past three years, the International People’s Tribunal on
Human Rights and Justice (IPT) has discovered unmarked bodies buried
at various places. Last year, discovery of nearly 1000 graves of the
unmarked Muslims in the Indian held Kashmir was also notable. Sources
have suggested that these graves include bodies of extrajudicial executions
committed by the Indian military and paramilitary forces.
It is notable that the US President Barrack Obama had repeatedly
said that the United States should help in resolving the Kashmir dispute
to deal with the problem of militancy in the region. Quite contrarily,
Richard Holbrooke, special envoy of the US new administration on
South Asia pointed out that he had “no mandate to deal with Kashsmir.”
But it is a good sign that in the recent few years, west has broken its
silence over the Indian-held Kashmir. This time Indian occupied Kashmir
has become a special focus of world’s attention including India itself.
Even the European Parliament passed a resolution, condemning New
Delhi for human rights violations in the Valley.