Pak equates Kashmir with Palestine

Two days after Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas made a historic move at the United Nations for recognition of his homeland as an independent State, Pakistan put the issue of Kashmir in the same bracket with the Middle East conflict and sought early resolution of the dispute in South Asia too.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told an annual meet of the 56-nation Organisation of Islamic Confere­nce (OIC) that the world com­munity must strive for resolving the “two oldest unresolved disputes on the UN agenda – Palestine and Kashmir” to ensure the right to self-determination for struggling people in both the lands.

The All Party Hurriyat Conference chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq too told an OIC Contact Group on Kashmir that Kashmiris supported the Palestinians’ bid for statehood recognition at the UN.

“Let me say to the people of Palestine that the people of Kashmir, proudly, are the first to congratulate you on your bold initiative. Let it be written in history that an oppressed people are overjoyed looking at you in your moment of glory, confident that our time will soon come,” he said.

India pledged support to Palestine’s statehood bid at the United Nations. New Delhi, however, is opposed to drawing a parallel between Kashmir and Palestine. It has been maintaining that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and the OIC has no locus standi in matters concerning internal affairs of India.

Khar joined her counterparts from other OIC member-States to seek an international investigation into the large number of unmarked graves in Jammu and Kashmir.

Mirwaiz also referred to the issue of unmarked graves and called upon the UN to condemn “the atrocities perpetrated upon the innocent Kashmiris, organise a tribunal to ascertain the gravity of the tyranny and to request Jeremy Sarkin, chairperson of the UN Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, to conduct an independent investigation”.

The Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission recently recommended the identification of all the 2,156 people buried in unmarked graves in north Kashmir.
The graves were identified through an investigation done by the panel’s police wing last month.

New Delhi, however, is likely to reject the demand for independent international probe into the unmarked graves, pointing out that India was a vibrant democracy, which fully respected rule of law and human rights, with civil liberties and freedoms enshrined as citizens’ fundamental rights in the Constitution.

India maintains that it has many effective mechanisms within its constitutional framework to address aberrations.

UN’s obligations

Mirwaiz said that the UN had moral and legal obligation to help resolving the issue of Kashmir and past disputes should not deter the world body from renewing its efforts to work for a promised settlement of the dispute.

Khar said that Pakistan had repeatedly underlined in its engagements with India the fundamental reality that the prospect of a lasting peace in South Asia was directly linked with “a just and durable solution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute”.

The Pakistani foreign minister had triggered a controversy last July, when she had met Kashmiri separatist leaders –both Mirwaiz and chief of the Hurriyat Conference’s hardline faction Syed Ali Shah Gilani – in New Delhi, just ahead of a meeting with her Indian counterpart S M Krishna.

India had expressed its unhappiness over Khar’s meetings with the separatist leaders of Kashmir.

Krishna and Khar, however, had discussed the issue of Jammu and Kashmir and agreed to “the need for continued discussions, in a purposeful and forward looking manner, with a view to finding a peaceful solution by narrowing divergences and building convergences”.

Now, 2,500 unidentified graves in Jammu

Even the dead would turn in their graves at such a startling revelation. Mail Today has found mass graves in Jammu's Poonch district where 2,500 unidentified bodies were buried by a lone gravedigger.

It is pertinent to note here that the state human rights commission (SHRC) had found in an inquiry over 2,100 unidentified bodies at 38 sites in the Kashmir Valley. The commission's report had come out last month.

But this is for the first time that graves unknown men have been identified in the Jammu region.

Sofi Aziz Joo - the lone gravedigger in this frontier town - claims that he has buried over 2,500 unidentified bodies, sometimes in mass graves, handed over to him by the police and the army.

The 90-year-old gravedigger said the bodies handed over to him by the Indian police and the Indian army were usually bullet-ridden, without limbs or mutilated. He also pointed out that most of the bodies had their faces disfigured beyond recognition.

Sofi used to bury the bodies, and sometimes only heads without any other part the body attached to it, in a graveyard opposite a small shrine near the army garrison. "The bodies would come anytime and burials were to be made without involving townsfolk for fear of provoking " anti- India" protests. So, I used to take the help of two labourers," he said.

None of the dead was known to him or his apprentices, he asserted.

"Once when the police brought 16 unidentified bodies and asked me to bury them, I along with a couple of labourers dug out a single grave to bury them all," said Sofi, pointing towards a raised ground in the graveyard, now covered by grass. "I don't remember the date. But I recall that the police said they were killed in Modpichae village," he said.

There are other mass graves in the graveyard too, he said and pointed out a grave which, according to him, has five bodies.

"They (the police) used to hand over bullet-ridden or disfigured bodies and tell me that they were militants killed by the army in gunfights," he said, when asked about the identity of the persons he buried.

He also pointed out that the faces of most of the bodies used to be mutilated beyond recognition. There have been times when Sofi buried only heads, without bodies, a process that he objected to later on.

"Over a period of time, it appeared fishy and I started refusing heads only. I started asking questions and demanded the full body," Sofi said. He recalled that once the police and the army handed him six heads for burial.

"It was the first time I was witnessing such a horror. I broke down," the gravedigger said. Moreover, Sofi was pressured to give in writing that he received six bodies.

Aslam Khan, a Thanamandi local, shows a grave of a person who was identified by his uncle.

THEY TOOK it in writing from me despite my protests. What could I have done?" In another instance, Sofi was asked to bury seven heads. "I wrapped the heads in shrouds and buried them. But, they took a receipt of seven bodies," he said. However, in the third such incident when the police came up with some 15 heads, Sofi protested. "I thought come what may, I will not do it anymore," he said. "Then they left."

Talking about the time during which he was burying all these bodies, Sofi said the police started giving him bodies with the beginning of militancy in Kashmir - a time when crossborder infiltration and exfiltration picked up. He recalled that he used to get one or two bodies everyday and unlike the Valley, in Poonch, no local was permitted to help him in the burial.

For each body Sofi received, he was supposed to put his signature on a foolscap paper, apparently a takeover. The police personnel, after handing over bodies to Sofi, would remain on guard until he completed the burial process.

The burials have cost Sofi around Rs1.85 lakh, maximum of which was spent on purchasing cloth for shrouds and remuneration to the labourers.

Deputy Commissioner Poonch Ajit Sahoo, did not see this correspondent, despite a prior appointment. Sahoo kept the correspondent waiting for two hours inside his office but did not come out to speak.

After the discovery of 2,156 unidentified bodies at 38 sites in the Valley, the SHRC had issued notices to the state government on a petition filed by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), seeking investigation into the graveyards of Jammu division's Poonch and Rajouri districts.

Ironically, there are seven graves of policemen too in this graveyard but all of these bear a proper epitaph. The remaining are housing mysteries along with their dead.