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print version(From: Kashmir Times, 20 June 2010, Editorial)
CREATIVE SOLUTIONS, UNCREATIVE SUGGESTIONS
South Asian intellectuals and peace activists from the cool climes of Simla earlier this week called for creative solutions to Kashmir problem and all they discussed were efforts for regional co-operation and cross-LoC interactions. Outlining this approach at the conference was Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao packaging the usual old stuff of making borders irrelevant. Not a word about creative ideas for treating the alienation of the people, reflected on the streets of atleast the Valley almost on a daily basis. This creativity is not exclusive to the civil society members outside this state. In fact it perfectly matches the official line that New Delhi has taken on the issue. Prime minister Manmohan Singh on his recent visit to Srinagar, talked of similar creative initiatives, deliberately skirting the human rights issue that lies at the core of the deepening alienation and lack of faith in Indian democratic and legal systems. He sketched an ambitious road map of economic prosperity, promising an extra central package, patting the chief minister, even as volumes of files lay pending in his office about non-performance of the state government in handling the previous packages. He talked of good governance and talked of strengthening relations across the Line of Control. Even as he mentioned the reports of working groups, born during his historic round table conferences, he conveniently developed amnesia about the working group report on human rights violations. Creative solutions indeed are wanted but creative suggestions to this end are wanting even more.
It is almost as if Delhi believes that there is no internal dimension to the problem and that the only trouble with Jammu and Kashmir is the non-existence of regional co-operation and cross-LoC interactions. A major part of the state is reeling under acute human rights crisis. In varying degrees, civil liberties of the people are crushed and denied in almost all parts of the state, all in the name of democracy. The people of the state have been vested one democratic right - that of voting in elections. That too is not absolute and may be subject to whims of politicians, often backed by central agencies, and their rigging modes. The people of Rajouri and Poonch have suffered the longest and worst doses of absence of civil liberties but the voices for democratic rights hardly ever simmer in the region because the people have resigned to their fate. In Kashmir Valley, however, where gross violation of human rights abuse results in anger spilling out on the roads in the form of protests and stone pelting, the government’s agencies are unsparing, responding to every voice, every stone with a bullet. In the much voiceless rural areas, young boys and men disappear and one hears about them only when encounters with militants, in which army men claim their valour, turn out to be fake, the dead men turning out to be missing men and not foreign militants as claimed. These issues are close to the hearts of the people who are still living under constant threat of the gun and the disproportionately high presence of security forces including the police. Isn’t it an irony that when prime minister talked about the problems of Kashmir, he did not feel that such issues merit attention.
Interestingly, his visit came a few days after the Machil fake encounter revelations, while protests over the incident were still raging in the Valley. Barely four days after he left, a young boy Tufail Mattoo, returning from tuitions, was allegedly hit with a tear-gas shell on his head by a policeman. He died on spot, as did many other teenagers before he did - succumbing to tear gas shell injuries even though neither the country’s laws, nor international standards permit any official agency to aim tear gas shells on the bodies of protestors. Tufail’s case is not one in isolation but the prime minister did not deem it fit to talk about such incidents and promise some remedy to ensure that they do not exist.
Years ago, from this very soil, he made a solemn promise to the people of Kashmir when he assured zero tolerance to human rights violations. Ever since, the promise has been observed in breach. His working group on human rights came up with creative suggestions of thinning troops, revocation of Armed Forces Special Powers Act and fairly probing cases of human rights violations as steps to reduce alienation. That time, amidst the ongoing peace process between India and Pakistan, hopes were still afloat in Kashmir and people waited patiently. But hopes mingling with pent up anger burst out like a volcano two years ago. New Delhi missed the bus and all it now does, along with its official paraphernalia and co-opted intellectuals is simply talk about the more glamourous things like building co-operation or at best parrot the promise of zero tolerance but exercising infinite tolerance to human rights abuses. Perhaps, in the fitness of the ground realities, the prime minister should re-coin the phrase of zero tolerance to human rights violations to ’zero tolerance to allegations of human rights violations’.
