NHRC has failed to provide succour: Kashmiri Pandits

Displaced Kashmiri Pandits Sunday flayed the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), accusing it of failure to provide succour to the community living in exile for the past 18 years.

On the eve of International Human Rights Day, a rights group, Roots In Kashmir (RIK), held a protest rally in the national capital, bringing to light the "injustices perpetrated on the community".

Hundreds of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits were driven out of their homeland in 1990, a year after separatist insurgency broke out in Muslim majority Kashmir Valley with armed groups demanding separation from India on religious lines.

"The NHRC has ceased to exist for us. We have submitted memorandums, fought cases and even met all senior bureaucrats and officials to apprise them of the situation but there has been no result till date," Neeru Kaul, an RIK activist, told IANS.

"It has completely failed to address the grievances of the Pandit community, which is living in its 18th year of exile from its homeland."

She said that despite cases of serious nature pending against erstwhile militant commanders, Yasin Malik and Bitta Karate, they continue to roam freely enjoying "all support from the Indian government".

On the other hand, "the Pandits continue to live the life of refugees in their own land", said Kaul.

"Astonishingly, the NHRC and the home ministry of India have in a written communication against a Right To Information application said that they don't have any data on terrorist Bitta Karate of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front while it's a known fact that there are cases pending against him in TADA and CBI courts," said Aditya Koul of RIK, who had filed the application around two months back.

"In the reply, the home ministry also said that they have no information on the number of Pandits killed in the Kashmir Valley since 1989," Koul said.

The group had equally harsh words for global human rights groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

"A blind attitude towards the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Pandit community speaks volumes of the discrimination against the Kashmiris," said Koul.

The rallyists are demanding that an enquiry commission be set to probe the reasons for Kashmiri Pandits' exodus from the valley and that the trial of former militant commanders like Bitta Karate and Yasin Malik be initiated.

They also said that exiled Pandits be declared as Internally Displaced People (IDP) and given succour according to the UN norms as well as better rehabilitation facilities for the people living in relief camps in Jammu and Delhi.

(IANS)

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