Tribunal wants mass graves probed

“Unmarked and unknown mass graves” have returned to haunt the Omar Abdullah government in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).

International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir (IPT), which claimed to have spotted “2,700 unknown, unmarked and mass graves containing 2,943 bodies”, wants the matter to be reinvestigated to uncover the truth.

“We stand vindicated because we had cautioned the government about the phenomenon of unknown mass graves. Had the government heeded our pleas, encounters such as Machil could have been prevented. Now, we do not know how many people have been killed in fake encounters in the past six months,” Khurram Parvez, IPT liaison and programme coordinator for Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, said.

J&K Police have registered a murder case against the army and named a serving Major of 4-Rajputana Rifles accused in its report after a preliminary probe into the Machil “fake encounter”.

The report has been submitted to the army for compliance.

After preliminary investigations by the army, the commanding officer of the unit was removed and the accused Major suspended pending further probe. The unit was removed from Machil and stationed in Meerut.

This is in addition to the three men, including a territorial army jawan, arrested by police.

Three youth were promised good wages and lured to work as porters. Instead, they were taken to Machil and handed over to the army, which allegedly branded them infiltrators and killed them in a fake encounter on April 30. They were buried in the Kalaroos graveyard.

In its 108-page report, Buried Evidence, released in December 2009, IPT claimed, “2,700 unknown, unmarked and mass graves containing 2,943 bodies are spread across 55 villages in Bandipora, Baramulla, and Kupwara districts.”

“The bodies buried in the 2,700 graves investigated by IPT were routinely delivered at night, some bearing marks of torture and burns…. The discourse of armed forces detailing their fight against terrorists and infiltrators in Kashmir reverberated loudly even as the actual identities of those killed in encounters are obfuscated.

This conceals the interposing of encounter with fake encounter killings. Civilian killings are portrayed as encounter deaths to legitimate militarisation,” the report says.

It notes that there are connections between the number of missing people and the “unmarked, unidentified, nameless and unknown graves” and therefore, the matter needs to be investigated.

The Association of Parents of Disappeared People claimed over 8,000 people had gone missing in the custody of security forces.

Chief minister Omar Abdullah said the government had received more complaints after the Machil encounter and none had been ignored. “We have dug more graves and more bodies have been identified. But no human rights violations have been found,” he said. “I will have a one-on-one meeting with PM. Human rights will be the focus of the talks,” Omar said.

IPT now plans to take the issue to the international fora to press for investigation. “We wanted the government to investigate, but they slept over the matter. Now, we will take this issue to the international fora,” Parvez said.