archive: Kashmiri pandits are 'genocide' victims: US Cong
Kashmiri pandits are 'genocide' victims: US Cong
IANS
The Navhind Times
July 16, 1999
Title: Kashmiri pandits are 'genocide' victims: US Cong
Author: IANS
Publication: The Navhind Times
Date: July 16, 1999
The US Congressman, Mr Frank Pallone, has urged India's National Human
Rights Com-mission (NHRC) to reconsider its recent rulings about
Kashmiri pandits, including its refusal to term the violence against
the community as "genocide."
In a statement in the US House of Representatives, Mr Pallone said he,
along with fellow lawmakers and leaders of the community, had pleaded
for describing the treatment meted out to the 300,000 pandits in the
valley as "genocide."
The other NHRC ruling he hopes will be reconsidered is the
commission's rejection of the demand to define the pandits - as the
Hindu community in Kashmir is referred to - as an Internally Displaced
People (IDP).
Now that Pakistan had apparently agreed to withdraw its fighters who
had crossed into India's side of the Line of Control, "I hope that the
attention of the United States and the world community will finally
focus on the long-ignored plight of the Kashmiri pandits," Mr Pallone
said.
He said the pandits have an ancient and a proud culture. Their roots
in the Kashmir Valley run deep. The pandits had been among the most
afflicted victims of the Pakistani-supported campaign of terrorism in
Jammu and Kashmir, he said. Virtually the entire population of
300,000 Kashmiri pandits had been forced to leave their ancestral
homes and property. Threatened with violence and intimidation, they
had been turned into refugees in their own country, he added.
Mr Pallone noted that the commission did acknowledge that the pandits
had been "victims of killings and ethnic cleansing, as part of the
militants' campaign to get Kashmir to secede from India."
Mr Pallone said the NHRC had recently set up a committee - comprising
its nominee and representatives of the Jammu and Kashmir government
and the community - to address pandits' concerns. But the committee
had still not met, he said.
"I am asking my colleagues to join me in signing a letter to the NHRC
asking that the decisions on genocide and IDP be reconsidered and that
the new committee begin regular meetings," he added.
Even before the current Kargil fighting, Mr Pallone pointed out, there
had been a disturbing pattern of massacres of civilians carried out by
the extremists operating in Kashmir. "While it is predominantly
Hindus who are the victims of these attacks, we have also seen attacks
against Muslim residents of Jammu and Kashmir who have dared to assist
the legitimate state authorities in putting a halt to the violence.
This is the true face of the insurgency in Kashmir, he added.
Mr Pallone said the extremists had transformed a peaceful, secular
state in India, one which happened to have a predominantly Muslim
population, into a "killing field as part of the goal of turning the
state into an area under strict Islamic rule."
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