Kashmir not an issue of bad governance but of self-determination: Mirwaiz

Geneva, March 20 (KMS): During the 13th Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, a seminar entitled, “Overcoming Barriers to Realizing the Self-determination” was organized by “The International Educational Development”, an NGO accredited with the United Nations.

The seminar was chaired by the Executive Director of Kashmir Center Washington, Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai. In his opening remarks, Dr Fai reminded the listeners that self-determination was a basic principle of the United Nations and that self-determination and peace and international security were interrelated. The denial of right to self-determination to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, he said, has brought India and Pakistan, both important countries, to the brink of nuclear catastrophe.

“For last 63 years they have been talking about Kashmir but there has been no face of the people of Kashmir. We want to make it clear that when the UN gave the right of self-determination, it also gave it to the people of Kashmir, whatever their religion, wherever they live,” he said. Therefore, he added, the genuine leadership of Kashmir must be included in the talks. For the talks to be meaningful, Dr Fai suggested that there should be an envoy of ‘an international standing’ acceptable to India, Pakistan and the Kashmiris. He proposed that Bishop Desmond Tutu should be appointed as the special envoy.

The Chairman of All Parties Hurriyet Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in his presentation said, the APHC has time and again tried to talk about Jammu and Kashmir with a view to present the real situation on the ground. It is a political dispute, it is not a territorial issue between India and Pakistan, it is an issue concerning the fate of more than 15 million people. We believe unless and until the international community, especially the UN, comes forward, the dispute cannot be resolved.

The government of India, he said, has tried to camouflage the dispute by putting irrelevant issues. “It is not an issue of bad governance or giving people economic benefits. Nor is it an issue, which has been sponsored by Pakistan since 1947. It is high time the government of India realizes that such a huge movement that has been there since 1947 and especially after 1990 is a peoples’ struggle. The government of India has to stop people viewing Kashmir from the prism of Pakistan,” he said. The Mirwaiz pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people had been killed, tortured, jailed, and were still missing and added that no struggle of such magnitude could be sponsored by an external party.

“Who are these people who are dying? They are Kashmiris, not Pakistanis, who have stood up for their basic rights, their right of self-determination. We urge the international community that the Kashmiris seek a bright and better future for all peoples of South Asia, which is not possible without peace in Jammu and Kashmir,” he maintained.

Affirming that the struggle was not a terrorist or extremist one, the Mirwaiz said that the All Parties Hurriyet Conference had taken the initiative to initiate a dialogue even when doing so presented grave risks. “We came forward and said it is time to talk, even when the dialogue process was not working.” He deplored that although India talked about peace in Kashmir, however, its approach was totally military. “They speak the language of peace but they talk through the barrel of the gun,” he said. The APHC Chairman indicated that it was ‘far from reality’ to think that the people of Kashmir would forget their struggle and he believed that the recent uprisings of 2008 and 2009 were indicative of the strength of a peaceful movement of protest. “We had more than a million people marching. They were not people with guns, or hand grenades, they were people who were asking for their rights to be restored to them; but the response was brute force,’ he lamented.

The Mirwaiz said that although India claimed to be the biggest and largest democracy of the world but her views in relation to Kashmir were very negative, particularly in relation to the black laws, which had enabled the military forces to act with impunity, especially the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the Disturbed Areas Act. The APHC, he said, has made suggestions regarding the repeal of the black laws, the release of political prisoners and gradual demilitarization to give the people, strangled under oppression for the last twenty years, some respite.

The Mirwaiz also made it clear that Kashmiris wished well to the people of India but it was important to realize that the issues won’t disappear, unless they were addressed. “It is high time that we all sit together. The time has come when we need to come forward, if we continue to evade the problem we will have a situation like in 1965 and 1971 when India and Pakistan fought wars, but now these two countries have nuclear weapons. We Kashmiris want to talk, to engage, to let the dialogue process be meaningful, let there be a mechanism. We need a system of engagement,’ he said.

Lord Nazir Ahmed, the Member of British House of Lords expressed the opinion that the UN resolutions were the only legal documents, which existed in relation to Kashmir. He pointed out that since 9/11 the world had changed, adding, “Whereas support was given for a UN administered plebiscite in East Timor, as well as to self-determination in the former Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, since 9/11 the UN position has weakened.” He said, ‘We now have a situation where those who have been oppressed, are called terrorists, it is very unfortunate, the language has changed. We need to get back to the values, which the UN stood up for. The UN authority needs to be reinstated.” One way for its authority to be reinstated, Lord Ahmed suggested, was for a special criminal tribunal to be set up under international law to investigate those who are responsible for the unmarked graves.

Lord Nazir Ahmed said, the UN ought not to allow any country that disregards the UN Security Council resolutions to join the Security Council and have permanent membership. “I think that it is time for the Secretary General to say enough is enough, if we can have a special envoy on Afghanistan Iraq, then we need a special envoy on Kashmir,” he added. Lord Nazir also indicated that Kashmiris should be included in any discussions and a start could be made in releasing political prisoners and investigating custodial disappearances in occupied Kashmir.

Ambassador Zamir Akram, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN office in Geneva, pointed out that the two longest and most deserving cases on the UN agenda in terms of self-determination were Palestine and Jammu and Kashmir. ‘We see a lot of attention being given to Palestine, as it should be, but Kashmir gets very little international coverage, which is regrettable. But it does not detract from the fact that the denial of the right of self-determination to the people of Jammu and Kashmir is a violation of the Human Rights charter. Self-determination is a fundamental human right and this right has been granted to the people of Jammu and Kashmir more than 60 years ago,” he added. Ambassador Akram also emphasized that, for successive Pakistani governments, the commitment to allowing the people of Jammu and Kashmir their self-determination lies at the heart of our policy, because self-determination was also the basis on which Pakistan was created. Unfortunately, he said, the UN guided plebiscite was not held in Jammu and Kashmir and today the situation in Jammu and Kashmir presented a grave danger to international peace and security, not just regional.

Akram reminded his listeners that following the 1998 nuclear tests by Pakistan and India, the then US President, Bill Clinton had described Kashmir as the most dangerous place in the world. “That danger has not subsided. With every day this danger is accentuated. Pakistan and India have engaged off and on in negotiations in a dialogue, which has so far proved to be sterile. Unfortunately our Indian interlocutors have lacked the political will to negotiate in good faith. In our view the United Nations resolutions calling for a plebiscite provide the only viable solution to this dispute, because this dispute can only be resolved on the basis of the wishes of the people,’ he added.

In relation to the role of the international community, he said that it had not delivered either on its political commitments or on human rights. “However, by a queer twist of international politics and the strategic environment in South Asia, which had involved the United States in the region especially in relation to Afghanistan, it seemed that some hope was emerging for a possible solution,” he said. The US realizes that in order for it to have a safe and honorable withdrawal from Afghanistan, it needs to deal with the security concerns of India and Pakistan, which means dealing with the heart of the problem and the heart of the problem is Jammu and Kashmir, he added.

Dr Karen Parker, UN delegate of the International Education Development, suggested that it was necessary to give more meat on the bones to understand the principle of self-determination. ‘So we have an idea of what we are talking about,” she maintained. Self-determination, she said, is not just a term, it is a legal term and it has elements. “There are five basic points to self-determination, firstly, people have the right to self-determination when they have an identifiable territory, when you hear the word Kosovo you can see it, you know where it is, or Western Sahara, or the Moluccas, you know where they are on the map.” The second element, she suggested, was that the people had to had a period of governing themselves in their land. Thirdly, there is normally some distinction, be it cultural, linguistic or religious. Despite the paternalism inherent in the fourth and fifth elements, the people have to demonstrate a will for self-determination and they have to show they have the capacity, these two were also valid elements in defining self-determination. Moreover, as Dr Parker pointed out, “You can’t give the right and then take it away, as has happened with the Kashmiris and then let it vanish. Describing Kashmir as particularly hot, she said that the situation was going to need greater impetus for there to be a resolution.

Internationally renowned peace activist, Dr Angana Chatterji, Co-Chair of the International Peoples Tribunal, spoke in relation to issues, which she had encountered while working in Kashmir. The Kashmir conflict, she said, relates to issues of identity and history, territory and resources. “India Pakistan and China have fought wars over this territory. Whereas India considers the dispute to be an internal matter and that militarization is necessary to secure its borders, in reality the period between 1947 and 1987 witnessed a peoples’ struggle for non-violent self-determination. In 1988 they began an armed struggle before reverting again to non-violence,” she maintained. In order to achieve its objectives, Chatterji said that the Government of India has been responsible for using ‘discipline and death’ as a means of social control, which has resulted in 70,000 deaths, more than 8,000 enforced disappearances between 1989 and 2009 adding that 60,000 people had been tortured, 100,000 had been orphaned and there was also a high rate of people with suicidal behavior and the tragic plight of the half widows who did not know whether their husbands were dead or alive. ‘Periods of long detention and interrogation have had a brutalizing effect,’ she said, adding, ‘I speak having made thirteen trips to the valley since July 2006, after hundreds of thousands of testimonials.’

Chatterji also highlighted that there were 600,000 Indian military personnel in Jammu and Kashmir, which continued to act with impunity, occupying 10.5 million kanals of land on which there were 671 security camps. Detailing her work with Advocate Pervez Imroz on mass graves discovered in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, she said that they documented 2700 unknown graves, 2943 bodies in 55 villages in 3 districts, which hold the bodies of people executed arbitrarily. In relation to the current wave of protests, she said that these were taking place in response to human rights violations in an attempt ‘to address the lacuna in civil society leadership. In closing, Dr Chatterji offered a fragment of a testimonial from a grave digger who said that he had been forced to dig the graves of about 260 people, who described ‘thick soil pressed with bodies, dead in encounters and barbed wire which strangles our land.’

Ms Victoria Schofield, Independent South Asian Analyst and author of Kashmir in the Crossfire and Kashmir in Conflict endorsed the definition of self-determination given by Dr Karen Parker. She said that main hurdle was the attitude of the Indian government which opposed a change in the status quo. Schofield indicated that there were some preliminary objectives such as demilitarization, which could be achieved.

The Executive Director of the Kashmir Center London, Professor Nazir Shawl, suggested that a look at the global arena revealed many conflicts with undemocratic structures and draconian laws. Citing Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, he agreed that the real test of democracy was not what was said in the constitution but how it functioned on the ground. Referring to his own background as an inhabitant of Indian occupied Kashmir, who had been forced to leave the valley, he suggested that if the siege of the army was to be lifted, and people were to be provided with political space, they would throng on the streets. “An ostrich like approach does not solve problems,” he said, adding that that it was the time that the international community acknowledged the gravity of the international dispute as it continued to promote cold war in South Asia. The Kashmiris’ struggle for self-determination, he said, should not be considered as merely a historical burden. “Geopolitical factors should not become an impediment but a source of facilitation in the interests of regional and global peace. The world’s largest military presence has failed to extinguish the flames of freedom,’ he said. Professor Shawl affirmed that there could be no military solution to Kashmir and it was time for India and Pakistan to accept the Kashmiris as partners for resolution. Finally, Professor Shawl pointed out that millions of people in India and Pakistan would welcome a settlement to the lingering dispute. ‘But it should not be dilution of our aspirations. It should not be a hollow truce or patchwork, but a comprehensive agreement,” he added.

Barrister Abdul Majeed Tramboo, the Chairman of Kashmir Center Brussels emphasized that the Kashmir is an issue of self-determination. ‘I believe self-determination is the only solution for the Kashmir dispute within the legal framework of the United Nations,” he maintained. He also pointed out that the issue of unnamed mass graves had been raised in the European Parliament but that it was also necessary to have a hearing at the UN in Geneva in order to ensure an impartial investigation.

Sardar Amjad Yousuf, the Executive Director of Kashmir Institute for International Relations pointed out that the Kashmiris had been facing a difficult situation. ‘We have displacement of more than 500, 000 people from the Line of Control (LoC). He also said that there were at least eight different maps of the state of Jammu and Kashmir depending on particular viewpoint. “There is an Indian map, a Pakistani map, a Chinese map, even an American CIA map,” he said.

Ms Shugufta of University of Azad Kashmir, Kotli elaborated in her paper that the idea and implementation of the right to self-determination was embedded deep in roots of history of civilized world. It is a building block of international law. “The UN Charter provides an environment to different nations of the world to develop a friendly relation among them based upon the principle of right to self-determination,” she said. Shugufta said that in 1947, two new nations, India and Pakistan emerged in South Asia. “With these two countries, decolonization was launched on the basis of the right of self-determination. What was good for itself was not considered suitable for the people of Indian occupied Kashmir,” she deplored.

The session ended with Nazir Quereshi, Vice President, World Kashmir Freedom Movement, thanking those who had attended the seminar. He pointed out that the continued occupation of Jammu and Kashmir by India had turned the land into a garrison. “In this connection I would say that a step towards the right of self-determination would be demilitarization of the area,” he added.

Source: Kashmir Media Service.
Link: http://www.kmsnews.org/news/kashmir-not-issue-bad-governance-self-determination-mirwaiz.