Kin search for Kashmir's 'missing' youths

Srinagar: The emotive issue has resurfaced. In fact, it was never dead or even forgotten; not at least by the families and other relative of thousands of Jammu and Kashmir’s victims of involuntary disappearances.

“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them”, quoting famous English writer of the Victorian era George Eliot, founder and chairperson of Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) Parveena Ahangar said, “They may have been out of our sight but were never out of our mind and heart and I assure you (that) they will never be forgotten”.

APDP claims that J&K has 8,000-10,000 cases in which victims vanished after their arrest by security forces and other official agencies during the three-decade old turmoil. In 2009, the state government had acknowledged only 3,421 such cases but said many of the people who went “missing” might have crossed over to Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir (PoK) to receive arms training or escape law on the Indian side of the Line of Control (Loc). Earlier in 2005, the Mufti Sayeed-led PDP-Congress coalition government had admitted on the floor of the state Assembly to 3,931 people having gone missing till that year.

During the past decade or so many family members of disappeared persons have died, especially parents of the victims. But to seek details on the whereabouts of the missing persons is “a collective relentless struggle for justice” being spearheaded by Ms Ahangar and her team. Also referred to as the “Iron lady of Kashmir”, she won the Rafto Prize for Human Rights in 2017 and was earlier in 2005 nominated for Nobel Peace Prize. She alleged that the successive governments have been “apathetic” to the plight of the families of the victims of enforced disappearances.

“We have been pursuing the cases of the victims of involuntary disappearances with iron hand,” she said. “But, he government and various official agencies including so-called security forces have been giving a cold shoulder,” she alleged.

Ms. Ahangar whose own teenage son Javed Ahmed disappeared after he was allegedly picked up by security forces during a raid in Batamallo suburb of Srinagar on August 19, 1990, said that many of the missing persons might be lying in over 7,000 unmarked graves the APDP claims to have found in five districts of the state.

Corroborating her, Khurram Parvez, human rights activist and programme coordinator of Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), said, “We have seen (that) in most cases where exhumations took place mainly on court orders it has been found that the disappeared persons were killed in fake encounters and buried as foreign militants in unmarked graves.”

Though the relatives of the most disappeared persons reject the idea of presuming them dead and have not given up hope, they also want a thorough investigation into unmarked graves. “Presuming our dear ones dead will put an end to the struggle against involuntary disappearances. But there should be a thorough and impartial inquiry into who is buried in these unmarked graves,” said Tabassum, a member of the APDP.

Earlier this week, the APDP once again sought the intervention of the J&K State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) and urged it to approach the state high court to ensure implementation of its 2011 and 2017 judgments on the issue. The SHRC issued notice and sought responses from the state government and the police by September 17.

A senior police officer who spoke on condition of anonymity said, “Reopening these graves or exhuming bodies or whatever is left there for DNA and other tests can create serious law and order problems and no responsible government can take such a risk.”

APDP had in its two reports titled “Facts Underground” and “Buried Evidence” released in 2008 and 2009, respectively, claimed existence of hundreds of unmarked and mass graves at 38 sites across the state.

Subsequently, the SHRC had in two separate judgments, delivered in 2011 and 2017, confirmed the phenomenon and issued a series of recommendations for investigations and reparations for 4,810 such graves across five districts.

One of its reports read, “It is beyond doubt that unmarked graves containing bodies do exist in various places in North Kashmir.”

The commission had, however, in October 2011 through its own investigation confirmed the presence of 2, 730 unidentified bodies in unmarked graves in districts of Baramulla, Bandipora and Kupwara. Of these 574 bodies were identified as being those of locals.