Nearly 1,000 nameless graves found in Indian Kashmir, rights group says | Kashmir |
SRINAGAR, India: Human rights workers have found the graves of nearly 1,000 unidentified people scattered in cemeteries across an isolated region of Kashmir, a prominent rights group said Friday, saying some may hold the bodies of innocent people killed by government security forces.
Researchers from the Association of Parents of Disappeared People found the graves during a yearlong survey in the region around the town of Uri, one of the most violent parts of Kashmir. Uri is near the Line of Control, the de facto frontier that divides Indian- and Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.
The association represents relatives of people who have disappeared since violence erupted in the insurgency-wracked Himalayan region 18 years ago.
While many of the graves are said to contain the bodies of unidentified foreign militants, rights workers say the sheer number of graves in just one area, along with accounts from villagers, makes "a strong case for an independent international scientific investigation," Pervez Imroz, the group's lawyer, said in a press conference.
The group does not have the resources to exhume the bodies, he said.
The Indian army dismissed the report, with Lt. Col. A.K. Mathur, an army spokesman in Srinagar, saying it was "designed to malign the security forces."
"We're fighting militancy. We're not involved in disappearances, custodial killings or any other form of (human rights) violations," he said.
But human rights workers have complained for years that innocent people have disappeared, been killed by government forces in staged gunbattles, and suspected rebels have been arrested and never heard from again.
Rights groups say there have been an estimated 8,000-10,000 disappearances since the violence erupted.
Kashmir's top elected official, Ghulam Nabi Azad, recently said only 1,017 people had disappeared, although in 2003 his predecessor put the number at about 4,000.
Last year, authorities charged seven policemen with murdering five civilians in staged gunbattles and trying to pass them off as foreign militants to claim rewards and earn promotions.
The government says most of the people who disappeared are Kashmiri youths who crossed into neighboring Pakistan for weapons training.
Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan, but claimed by both. More than a dozen rebel groups have been fighting for the Indian-controlled portion's independence from predominantly Hindu India or its merger with mostly Muslim Pakistan.
More than 68,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the conflict.
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/03/28/asia/AS-GEN-Kashmir-Nameless-Graves.php
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