According to WikiLeaks, International Committee of Red Cross told US diplomats in 2005 that security forces in Kashmir were using electrocution, sexual abuse and other methods of torture on Kashmiri detainees.
The WikiLeaks expose on the alleged use of torture by security forces in Kashmir has triggered a political storm in the Valley.
According to WikiLeaks, International Committee of Red Cross told US diplomats in 2005 that security forces in Kashmir were using electrocution, sexual abuse and other methods of torture on Kashmiri detainees.
Claiming innocence, chief minister Omar Abdullah said, “We do not condone torture. The cables date back to 2005 when we were not in power. It is the period when the ‘healing touch’ policy [of the Mufti Mohammad Sayeed government] was talked about.”
Sayeed was chief minister from 2002 to 2005 under a post-poll agreement between Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Congress. The arrangement was that PDP and Congress would head the government for three years each.
The expose has given a handle to separatists and human rights groups to attack New Delhi for Jammu and Kashmir’s “poor” rights record.
“WikiLeaks has said what we have been saying all through: How political activists are being framed and booked under black laws. How torture is being pursued as a policy. Around 9,000 people have disappeared in custody and there is no accountability of the forces,” Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of moderate Hurriyat Conference, said.
The Hurriyat chief also had some tough words for the US. “It has exposed US silent. They were in the know of things but continued to remain silence. It is now up to the world community to wake up and take notice of rights abuses [in Kashmir]. We will push for it,” he said.
Mirwaiz has been put under house arrest after the expose.
Khurram Parvez, programme coordinator of Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, said, “Such was the pressure of civil society on the US that [president] Barack Obama promised in his election to close down the Guantanamo prison [a US detainment facility in Cuba established by the Bush administration in 2002 where Iraq and Afghan war detainees were allegedly tortured]. We
have to see how the civil society in India reacts. Will they go by the government or wake up to the revelations?”
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