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Srinagar, April 11, 2013 (PPI-OT): The Amnesty International has urged India and its authorities in occupied Kashmir to investigate all human rights violations and abuses promptly, effectively and transparently and bring the perpetrators to justice in proceedings that meet international fair trial standards.
Shashi Kumar Velath, Director Programmes, Amnesty International in India talking to a Srinagar-based daily, Kashmir Reader, said, “We noted continued misuse of broad powers by the police and other forces permitted under laws such as the Public Safety Act and Armed Forces Special Powers Act” on protesters, many of them young.
“We have raised concerns about the human rights situation in Kashmir at the international level consistently before several different UN bodies and will continue to do so,” Shashi added.
The Amnesty Director noted that there was a decreasing willingness from top officials of the puppet administration in occupied Kashmir to meet members of the human rights body.
The remarks have come in the backdrop of the puppet Chief Minister Omar Abdullah’s refusal to meet a three-member Amnesty team during their recent visit to the Valley. The team had met a variety of civil society actors including journalists, academics, human rights activists, lawyers and others who shared their experiences and information on the current human rights situation in the Valley.
The Amnesty has been running an online campaign asking people to sign up and demand Omar Abdullah “To pick up his pen to stop police abuse in Kashmir” by issuing an administrative order directing authorities to not repeatedly detain individuals “under multiple, consecutive PSA detention orders that have facilitated administrative detentions, torture, ill-treatment and other human rights violations in the state for years.”
In October last year, the Amnesty slammed the Omar Abdullah administration for continuing use of PSA to detain people and in 2011 the Amnesty had described the PSA as a “lawless law”.
Shashi said that the Amnesty would continue to raise instances of human rights violations “in any context to the appropriate bodies, both international and national, in line with our mandate as an organization dedicated to defending and protecting human rights.”
For more information, contact:
Kashmir Media Service
Email: info@kmsnews.org
Phone: 92-51-4435548, 4435549
Fax: 92-51-4861736