Pakistan is trying
to focus exclusively on Indian Security Forces action against terrorism,
masking the fact that state action cannot be treated as an isolated phenomenon
of human rights violations in an atmosphere of continued terrorists' violence.
In fact it is terrorists' violence that ultimately
determines the limits and extent of state action to contain it. Unfortunately,
for all their efforts, the human rignts organisations, too, have also focused almost exclusively on state action and not on the activities of the terrorists
that prompted the state action in the first place.
Terrorists' violence per se is a violation of
human rights. The resolution of the UN General Assembly on measures to
prevent international terrorism, passed on December 9 in 1985 followed by
the Security Council resolution after nine days, interalia "unequivocally
condemned as criminal, all acts, methods and practices of terrorism wherever
and by whom ever committed, including those who jeopardised the friendly
relations between states".
Pak rangers imparting arms training to Kashmiri
Youth
Don't the terrorists have any responsibility ?
And by focussing exclusively on state action, is not Pakistan guilty of
distorting the reality?
Moreover, are Human Rights meant only to protect
a few fundamentalist Muslims in Kashmir against the authority of the state? Do they not equally involve protection of the Hindus, Buddhists, Shia
Muslims and others against the extermination, persecution and threat? Are
they not to be allowed their traditional way of life or are they to be
swept under by a religious crusade aiming for Islamisation ?
The right of self-determination that Pakistan
is championing is in fact a ploy for the creation of a religious state
in which religious minorities and women are subjected to servitude. The
slogan of Islamic Jehad in Kashmir is itself a negation of the Declaration
of Human Rights.
That apart, even less attention has been paid
to the plight of migrants, majority of them Hindus, who have been terrorised
to migrate from their homes in the Kashmir valley. These migrants have
been reduced to live in pitiable conditions, particularly during the winter
months, in shabby accommodation or in open. Ironically, the arrested terrorists
are in prisons with proper food, clothes and shelter. Are their Human Rights
not worth anything ? Do they not even have the right to live?
