Syed Tahir Rashdi
Why isn’t the US and it’s western allies condemning India for its reign of terror in Indian occupied Kashmir since 1989? Who is the biggest abettor of state terrorism and human rights abuser?Or why isnt US & allies condemning Israel’s genocide on Palestinians or even US bombing & killing Muslims in the Middle East for the past 20 years? Who is the biggest abuser of human rights? Western powers not only tolerate Israeli atrocities against Palestinians, they even quietly encourage them. Jammu and Kashmir has been the subject of a territorial dispute between India, Pakistan and China since the mid-20th century. This region sits atop India’s most northern point, and was until 2019 India’s only Muslim-majority state, which granted it a separate flag and constitution. However, on August 5 last year, India passed a resolution to extend control over the area, removing its autonomy and statehood. Human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir union territory are an ongoing issue in northern parts of India. The abuses range from mass killings, enforced disappearances, torture, rape and sexual abuse to political repression and suppression of freedom of speech. The Indian Army, Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), Border Security Personnel (BSF) and various separatist militant groups have been accused and held accountable for committing severe human rights abuses against Kashmiri civilians.Some rights groups say more than 100,000 people have died since 1989[7] while the official figures from Indian sources state the estimates of number of civilians killed due to the insurgency as above 50,000. According to scholar Seema Kazi, the crimes by militants are incomparable to the larger scale abuse by Indian state forces. We underlining the fact that the fate of small countries and ethnic minorities seems bleak in our post-Cold War era. The latest clampdown in occupied Kashmir by the Indian government that started on August 5, 2019 completes more than one year, with life far from normal for 12.5 million Kashmiris. As the year passed and international pressure mounted to restore freedoms, Indian authorities claimed they had ‘eased’ some restrictions, such as lifting roadblocks and restoring landlines and some mobile phone services.Life, however, remains hard in occupied Kashmir, with hundreds of checkpoints still in place and internet coverage patchy and slow. The economic effect has been dire while coronavirus lockdown measures have only added to the hardship.Security operations against Kashmiri fighters have accelerated, putting 2020 on course to be one of the bloodiest years for some time. According to a rights group report in July, Indian-occupied Kashmir had seen at least 229 killings during more than 100 military operations since January. It also saw 55 internet shutdowns and the destruction of 48 structures, the report by the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society said.India has also granted tens of thousands of people from outside the region the same rights as Kashmiris, meaning they can now buy land for the first time — a move critics and residents say is an attempt to change the demographic makeup of the region. On the other hand, the Israeli government continued to enforce severe and discriminatory restrictions on Palestinians’ human rights; restrict the movement of people and goods into and out of the Gaza Strip; and facilitate the transfer of Israeli citizens to settlements in the occupied West Bank, an illegal practice under international humanitarian law. Israel’s twelve-year closure of Gaza, exacerbated by Egyptian restrictions on its border with Gaza, limits access to educational, economic and other opportunities, medical care, clean water and electricity for the nearly 2 million Palestinians who live there. Eighty percent of Gaza’s population depend on humanitarian aid.Israeli forces stationed on the Israeli side of fences separating Gaza and Israel continued to fire live ammunition at demonstrators inside Gaza who posed no imminent threat to life, pursuant to open-fire orders from senior officials that contravene international human rights standards. According to the Palestinian rights group al-Mezan, Israeli forces killed 34 Palestinians and, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, injured 1,883 with live ammunition during these protests in 2019 as of October 31. Here we are discussing not only innumerable human rights violations committed by the Indian government against the Kashmir people or Israeli atrocities on Palestinians; instead, we underlining the fact that the fate of small countries and ethnic minorities seems bleak in our post-Cold War era. During a brief period after the end of the Cold War, the U.S. ruled as the sole superpower in a unipolar world order. The U.S. occupied both Afghanistan and Iraq with impunity. Since then, political instability has been the norm in both of these countries, where people struggle to live amidst poverty, disease and political conflict.After World War II, significant developments and ameliorations were realized in the fields of international law, including the rights of women, refugees, and ethnic and religious minorities. International public opinion and international organizations served as safeguards against human rights violations.During the Cold War period, we criticized the international system for its double standards. Regarding the present international order, there is no standard at all, with injustice constituting the norm and unlawful acts of international actors simply remaining unpunished. Despite their colonial past, Western countries emphasized the protection of human rights during the Cold War period. Today, they are only advocating these rights for their own citizens, while their conception of justice remains restricted within their national borders.
(Writer is a freelance writer based in Shahdadpur. He’s Pursuing BS (Pakistan Study) at University of Sindh and he can be reached at syedtahir926@gmail.com.)
