International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir
| Founded | 2008 |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Investigation of Human right abuses in Jammu and Kashmir |
|
Area served
|
Jammu and Kashmir |
|
Key people
|
Parvez Imroz, Angana P. Chatterji, Gautam Navlakha and Zaheer-Ud-Din |
| Website | www |
International People's Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir (IPTK) is an initiative formed by Indian human rights activists for the purpose of probing human right violations in the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, and bridging the gap between people living in Kashmir and rest of India. It was first convened in 2008 by Parvez Imroz, Angana P. Chatterji, Gautam Navlakha and Zaheer-Ud-Din. Chatterji served as convener until December 2012.
The Tribunal was first envisioned in 2006 when Parvez Imroz, a human rights activist, invited Angana Chatterji to Kashmir. From 2006-2008, Chatterji studied the Kashmir issue and interviewed the locals. Mallika Kaur, a scholar of Harvard Kennedy School, while explaining the need of the Tribunal, said that there was no such mechanism for investigating the human right abuses in this hypermilitarized region.
The Tribunal's mandate does not include finding political solutions to resolve the Kashmir issue. Instead it includes recording and investigating crimes committed only in the part of Kashmir administered by India. According to Mallika Kaur the Tribunal did not include the Pakistani-administered Kashmir because it was set up by Indian citizens and access across the heavily guarded border is not possible. The Tribunal was also mandated to investigate how the violations of human rights by the militants intersect with those security forces.
In December 2009 the International People's Tribunal released a report titled Buried Evidence. The Tribunal alleges that the insurgency from 1989-2009 has caused more than 70,000 deaths. According to Angana P. Chatterji, the convener of the Tribunal, they investigated fifty killings by the Indian Security Forces; except one all were declared militant. Of those who were killed in these incidents 39 were Muslims, four were Hindus and rest were of undetermined religious background. The Tribunal found that only one of those killed was a militant and the rest were killed in staged encounters. She further stresses the need of an independent inquiry into forced disappearances and fake encounters, which according to her may result in some correlation of 8000 disappearances with the bodies in unmarked graves. The Tribunal found 2700 (about 3000) unknown and unmarked graves having 2900 bodies in three districts of Jammu and Kashmir. A gravedigger in a statement to the Tribunal said that he witnessed the burials of 203 people killed extrajudicially between 2002-2006. The Tribunal has criticized the United Nations and its members for failing to stop the fallout of the India's militarization in the valley.
...
Wikipedia