Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai
\nWashington
\n81st session of the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) is taking place in Geneva under the chairmanship of Dr. Claude Heller of Mexico. CAT is composed of 10 internationally known independent experts. It began on October 28 and will continue until November 22, 2024. CAT defines its objective in these words, \u201cIn order to ensure adequate protection for all persons against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, over the years the United Nations has adopted universally applicable standards.
\nThese standards were ultimately embodied in international declarations and conventions. In developing this valuable instrument, the United Nations did not merely put in writing in a series of articles a body of principles and pious hopes, the implementation and observance of which would not be guaranteed by anything or anyone. It set up also a monitoring body, the Committee against Torture, whose main function is to ensure that the Convention is observed and implemented.\u201d
\nTorture, inhuman and degrading punishment in my judgement, deserve special abhorrence and deterrents. They should all be made international crimes with no immunity for any government official implicated in the villainies.
\nIt is undisputable that fundamental human rights are universal. That is the tacit assumption of all the declarations, conventions and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. They know no religious, national, or political boundaries. Everyone stands on the same plane when human rights are at issue.
\nThere is no denying that international declarations and conventions need strengthening. Unfortunately, these noble declarations and conventions were never applied when the world powers saw the bleeding body that of Kashmir.
\nDr. Nigel S. Rodley of Great Britain and former U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture reported that the security forces systematically practice torture against persons in Jammu and Kashmir in order to coerce them to confess to militant activity, to reveal information about suspected militants, or to inflict punishment for suspected support or sympathy with militants…[M]ethods of torture included beating, rape, crushing the leg muscles with a wooden roller, burning with heated objects, and electric shocks…The U.N. Rapporteurs on Torture and Extrajudicial Killings renewed their requests to visit during the year, but the Government did not permit them to do so.\u201d
\nEarlier, UN Human Rights Committee issued a statement on July 24, 2024, that, \u201cThe Committee was concerned that some provisions of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Acts and counter-terrorism legislation are not in compliance with the Covenant.
\nThe Committee also voiced its concern over the application of counter-terrorism legislation for decades in \u201cdisturbed areas\u201d, such as districts in Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir and Assam, has led to widespread and grave human rights violations, including excessive use of force leading to unlawful killings, prolonged arbitrary detention, sexual violence, forced displacement and torture. It also asked India to establish a mechanism to initiate a process to acknowledge responsibility and ascertain the truth regarding human rights violations in disturbed areas.\u201d
\nUN human rights experts, including Mary Lawlor, Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders urged the Indian authorities to stop targeting Kashmiri human rights defender Khurram Parvez. \u201cWe call on the Indian authorities to immediately release him and ensure his rights to liberty and security,\u201d they added.
\n\u201cWe regret that the Government continues to use the UAPA as a means of coercion to restrict civil society\u2019s, the media\u2019s and human rights defenders\u2019 fundamental freedoms in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir as well as in the rest of the country. We therefore once again urge the Government to bring this legislation in line with India\u2019s international legal obligations under human rights law,\u201d the experts said.
\nWhat is the crime of Khurram Parvez, one may ask? Khurram Parvez documented a 549-page report entitled, \u201cTorture: Indian State\u2019s Instrument of Control in Indian Administered Jammu and Kashmir.\u2019 He wrote, \u201cYou cannot understand human rights if you don\u2019t understand the context. Human rights abuses are taking place all around the world, in many places, including in India.
\nBut the difference is these are happening because of aberrations, deficiencies in governance, and because people transgress the law. What is happening in Kashmir is not an aberration, it is part of an institutionalized policy of the Indian government.\u201d
\nMr. Parvez pleaded for the international community, whose assistance to date had been \u2018dismal\u2019 and all the organizations working for Kashmir to bring pressure to lobby for a United Nations \u2018probe\u2019 on the situation in Kashmir. Without such intervention, he said, \u2018we cannot proceed forward. We are now at a stage where it is a complete dead end. We have done everything; we have met everyone in the government, but nothing has changed.
\nThe prologue to this report was written by Professor Juan E. Mendez, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Professor Mendez writes, \u201cI am convinced that a report, when it is as rigorous, evidence based and persuasive as this one is, constitutes a building block towards public awareness of the tragedy of torture.\u201d However, the dreams of Professor Mendez were shattered when the world powers turned a blind eye to his expectation that \u201cIt (the report) can also spearhead democratic debate about measures of public policy needed to re-establish the rule of law in this extremely sensitive area (Kashmir).\u201d
\nIt is well established that human rights defenders are cornerstones of the UN human rights machinery. Individuals must be energized to pick up the cudgels of enforcement, whether by way of free speech, legal services, political leadership, revelations, or otherwise. Thus, it seems to me, some special international immunity akin to diplomatic immunity under the Vienna Convention is worth considering for credentialed defenders of human rights.
\nThe repression of Kashmir\u2019s soul has not diminished the pain or the need for India to meet those face to face who have had nothing but a boot to the belly and a cane to the back. The voice of Kashmir not only remains as vibrant and shrill as in the very beginning, it is yet even stronger. It is time that India showed some honesty and forthrightness in its dealings with Kashmir.
\nThe presence of 900,000 Indian troops plus seventy-seven years of conflict would seem to most observers a clear indication that Kashmir\u2019s differences with India are intractable and irresolvable given the persistent resistance, despite the serious imbalance of power between the two.
\nIt is our hope that the reports of UN Human Rights Committee, CAT and others will mobilize the policy makers of the members states of the UN Human Rights Council to do everything in their constitutional power to stop the torture, inhuman and degrading treatment of the people of Kashmir. It is further our hope that the policy makers of these member countries will look to solving the root cause of the problem \u2013 the unfulfilled promise of self-determination as guaranteed by successive United Nations Security Council resolutions.
\nThe world powers should persuade India that it is in India\u2019s interest to end the systematic torture and officially sanctioned inhuman and degrading treatment in Kashmir. It is time to end the charade. It is time to allow the people of Kashmir to sort out their own affairs and determine their own future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai Washington 81st session of the UN Committee Against Torture (CAT) is taking place in Geneva under the chairmanship of Dr. Claude Heller of Mexico. CAT is composed of 10 internationally known independent experts. It began on October 28 and will continue until November 22, 2024. CAT defines its objective in these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442314,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-442285","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n