Excelsior Correspondent
New Delhi, Mar 10: Asian-Eurasian Human Rights Forum, a Delhi-based NGO with ECOSOC special status has posted a statement to the Chairman of the ongoing 26th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) lasting from March 3 to March 28 in Geneva in which it has demanded overall examination of the case of ethnic cleansing in Kashmir of its Pandit religious minority in January 1990.
The statement has been submitted under item 8 of the Agenda which deals with IDPs. It is likely to come up for debate in the session of the UN Human Rights Council on March 28 and prior to that, if adopted, its copies will be circulated among the member-countries of the Commission. When contacted by the Excelsior, the general secretary of the NGO, Dr. K.N. Pandita stated owing to the inability of Government of India to control religion based and extremely sponsored terrorism in Kashmir in 1989-90, terrorists and fascists calling themselves “freedom fighters’’ selectively murdered over a thousand innocent, unarmed and peace loving members of the religious minority community called the Pandits of Kashmir.
He said that under threats of decimation relayed through public media, the frightened minority community of 350,000 persons was forced to flee their homes and hearts and lead an exiled life as an internally displaced persons seeking shelter at other places of India.
He said, while ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandit religious minority in the Indian part of Kashmir was brought about through force of arms, the Indian Government, which had the moral and constitutional responsibility of protecting civilian lives, showed no will to protect them against the onslaught of their assailants.
Dr Pandita said that GoI calls the victims of terrorism as migrants despite strong protests by the community that they had not migrated out of their free will but were forced out at the point of gun. As such they fall in the category of IDPs under UNHR charter and definition.
He said that GoI has refused to give them relief in accordance with the norms set forth for IDPs in the UNHRC resolutions passed by Working Group on Minorities and the Kampala Convention. They have been denied the right to seek asylum, he added.
He demanded that KPs be given proper nomenclature of IDPs according to UNHRC definition and not as migrants and provided with adequate relief, rehabilitation in concentration in their homeland according to their free will and make politically and economically empowered to conduct their affairs without fear.
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