| News Details |
| AIKS welcomes Centre’s decision ban Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) | |
New Delhi, March 23 (Scoop News)-All India Kashmiri Samaj (AIKS) in its emergency meeting held today, , at New Delhi, under the chairmanship of its President, Col Tej K Tikoo, passed a resolution welcoming the Central Government’s decision to ban Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front.
More importantly, AIKS welcomes the Government’s statement which, for the first time, acknowledged that Kashmiri Pandits were purged out of the Kashmir Valley because of their being subjected to genocide in 1989-90.
It may be mentioned that according to the fact-sheet presented to the National HumanRights Commission (NHRC) by the State of Jammu and Kashmir,719 Hindus had been killed. The report states, “Due to the targeted attacks by the militants against the innocent civilians in the early years of the ongoing militancy in Jammu and Kashmir, coupled with calls by Islamist terrorist groups to Kashmiri Pandits to leave the Valley, the vast majority of them and other minority communities
were forced to migrate.”For a community numbering less than half a million prior to their exodus from Kashmir in December 1989, has over 700 of its members killed from the fall of 1989 up till the summer of 1990, was indeed a heavy toll.
The basic human rights of Pandits, as of every other Indian, are guaranteed by the Indian Constitution and the provisions of International Law. These provisions were clearly violated and their abuse should have straightway attracted the invoking of such provisions to defend the basic human rights of Kashmiri Pandits. For getting justice under such provisions, they did not have to belong to a minority community. It was only because the Indian Government and international organizations turned a blind eye to their plight, that they (Pandits) had to present their case in front of the NHRC.
All India Kashmiri Samaj, an apex organization of global Kashmiri Pandits, along with other various Kashmiri Pandit organizations and individuals, like Sh. Rajinder Premi, presented a comprehensive case, in which they pleaded with the NHRC to declare the events preceding the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, and those that continued till much after they had evacuated the Valley, as ‘genocide’, as defined by the International Convention, to which India is a signatory.
In order to preserve its secular façade, the political establishment sacrificed the Kashmiri Pandits at the altar of political expediency and vote-bank politics. Truth became a casualty and Pandits became the victims of the unjust and unjustified stand taken by the State and Central governments. It is, nevertheless apparent fromthe stand taken by the NHRC that they were hard to put to justify their eventual stand as they appeared to have been convinced of the Pandits’ argument that genocide did actually take place. The
NHRC resorted to the jugglery of semantics and played with the words to conclude that ‘genocide-type of the situation had got created’. Actually, what they said was this, “Killing and ‘ethnic cleansing’ of Kashmiri Pandits must be seen in the deeper intent to secure the secession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. The crimes committed against the Kashmiri Pandits are, by any yardstick, deserving of the strongest condemnations... but against the stern definition of the
‘Genocide Convention’; the Commission is constrained to observe that while acts akin to genocide have occurred in respect of Kashmiri Pandits, and that, indeed, in the minds and utterances of some of the militants, genocide type design may exist... the crimes, grave as they undoubtedly are, fall short of ultimate crime of genocide.” (NHRCCase No. 938/94–95 7 1181/94–95, 11 June 1999).
Till now, leave alone calling it a genocide, all previous governments at the centre had shied away from calling it even an ethnic cleansing, which it certainly it was.
In view of the foregoing, the displaced Kashmiri Pandits see the change in the governments stand as a very positive development. What is more important is the fact that it has not shied away from naming JKLF as the main culprit for our genocide.
It may be mentioned that in 1988-90, JKLF was the sole terrorist group(Tanzeem) operating in Kashmir and as the Tanzeem was wholly made up of local youth, most of them were known to their victims and the Kashmiri Pandit community at large. Therefore, the killers were easily identified.
In view of this latest positive development, AIKS appeals to the government to take this matter to the logical conclusion by bringing the perpetrators of our genocide to justice. This includes the self-proclaimed killer of Pandits, Farooq Ahmad Dar, aka, Bitta Karate, and many others who roam free.
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