Spokesman Report
Geneva:First World Congress on Enforced Disappearances (WCED) began today (January 15) in Geneva, Switzerland with the keynote address by Nada Youssef A. AL NASHIF, United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights and will continue until January 16. The World Congress is co-organized by ‘Convention Against Enforced Disappearances Initiative’ CEDI, ‘the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances’ (CED), ‘the United Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances’ (WGEID), and ‘the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights’ (OHCHR). It has more than two dozen partners, including International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, FIDH and many others.
Owing to a new political reality, the United Nations addressed a problem when it recognized the growing trend of ‘disappearances’ is being used as a method of punishment. As State actors’ culpability for actions perpetrated on detainees became an issue, the number of potential detainees who simply ‘disappeared’ increased. As these persons disappeared, the State could deny violating human rights because there was no evidence of their involvement because these individuals never reappeared alive. Realizing that State actors were using this new form of terror to bypass domestic and international law, the UN adopted the ‘Declaration of the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances’ on December 18, 1992.
Article 1 states that: Ant act of enforced disappearances is an offense to human dignity. Article 2: No state shall practice, permit or otherwise tolerate enforced disappearances.
According to WCED “Enforced disappearance remains widespread across the world, with devastating repercussions on entire societies. Following decades of mobilization to prevent and eliminate this heinous human rights violation, the ‘International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance’ (the Convention) was adopted in 2006, thanks to the tireless efforts of States, associations of victims, human rights and nongovernmental organizations and experts.”
The United Nations has gone to great length to establish those human rights which it considers inalienable and inherent to all human beings. I believe in this regard, we have shown the United Nations deep respect and concern for protecting human rights in theory, however, the practical application of the United Nations’ efforts has suffered terribly. Violations of all the above Articles, Principles, Resolutions, Conventions continue throughout the world unabated. Impunity remains the principal cause for the violation of human rights.
The United Nations and other international forums, and now ‘First World Congress on Enforced Disappearances’ (WCED) have witnessed intense discussion and negotiations on disappearances of individuals at different places in the world. Yet the enforced disappearances of thousands of Kashmiri civilian populations living under Indian occupation has received little, if any, attention.
According to the United States, State Department Country report, the report issued by the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights and Srinagar-based, “Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), over 8,000 people have disappeared in Kashmir since 1989.
Despite the observations contained in a number of reports published by human rights organizations and governments, including the United State, Department of State, report of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human rights, US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), Indian authorities continue to kidnap, detain and torture Kashmiri civilians with impunity. While the laws such as the ‘Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners’, as well as the ‘Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials’ and the ‘Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under any Form of Detention or Imprisonment’ adapted by the UN General Assembly in 1979 and 1988 respectively., continue to remain on the statute books, the Indian occupation administration under its specially devised laws and regulations such as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), and Public Safe Act, (PSA) persist in massive violations of the basic rights of the people of Kashmir. Amnesty International calls PSA as ‘lawless law.’
It is perhaps the iron curtain of secrecy and silence drawn by India across the occupied territory that has prevented the systematic atrocities and continuous carnage being seen by the world. However, thanks to the efforts of some conscientious journalists, and dedicated human rights workers a part of the truth though not the immensity in detail, about the carnage in Indian occupied Kashmir is out in the open. By adding the insult to the injury, Narendra Modi, the prime minister of India said in Srinagar on January 13, 2025 that ‘There is an atmosphere of peace in Jammu and Kashmir.’ Modi Ji does not know or does not want to know that his ‘peace’ in Kashmir is a delusion, otherwise why to arrest all these journalists and human rights defenders who have paid and are still paying a very high price for documenting the human rights atrocities committed by your army in Kashmir. Here are few examples.
The Committee to Protect Journalists on March 4, 2024, expressed alarm over the re-arrest of Kashmiri journalist Aasif Sultan two days after he was freed from more than five years of arbitrary detention and called on Indian authorities to immediately cease harassing him in retaliation for his work. Although, Aasif Sultan received the annual John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award by the National Press Club of America on October 17, 2019
Sajad Gul spent 910 days in jail under a draconian law, Public Safety Act. Canada-based, ‘Front line Defenders’ called Sajad Gul human rights defender and journalist. Sajad said that he was accused of crimes he never committed.Another journalist, Fahad Shah, Editor of Kashmir Walla, spent 600 days in jail. He is also a recipient of a Human Rights Press Award in 2021.
Khurram Parvez, the chairperson of Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) and a recipient of the 2006 Reebok Human Rights Award was arrested on November 22, 2021. By now, he has spent 1147 days in prison. Time included Khurram Parvez in its annual list of the 100 most influential people in 2023. Professor Mary Lowler, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders said “Khurram Parvez is not a terrorist. He is a human rights defender.” And Amnesty International said, ‘Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez must be immediately released.’
FIDH, one of the partners of this Congress elected Khurram Parvez as its Deputy Secretary General on April 17, 2023. “The FIDH International Board (IB) has chosen a figure from our federation’s network, for whose struggle in India, we have nothing but admiration,” said Alice Mogwe, President of FIDH. “Khurram Parvez is in prison for his fight for truth, justice and human rights. Justice will prevail. His struggle is our struggle.”
During an international Conference in New York on December 11, 2015, Khurram Parvez
explained that one of the main reasons relating to disappearances was the monetary incentive for killing a ‘militant’ in Kashmir. ‘If you want to make money you have to kill a militant.’ According to government figures, since there are only 150 militants left in Jammu and Kashmir, invariably those killed were claimed to be unidentified foreign militants. But he said, ‘how do you know the nationality of people if they are unidentified?’
It is time that India, which is flouting international law and morality, must be made to abide by the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Right to which it is a signatory. The unbearable suffering of the people of Kashmir cannot be brought to an end, nor the constant danger to regional peace removed unless concerted pressure is brought on the Indian government to turn to the sanity and civilized conduct. It would be in the long-term interest of India itself.
In order to protect the human rights of the people of Kashmir, the UN has no need to establish a new bureaucracy, instead, it can implement the 1948 Security Council resolutions granting Kashmiris the right to a plebiscite. The withdrawal of foreign troops and an internationally monitored plebiscite will eradicate human rights abuses in Kashmir.
