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Pakistan dossier details Indian war crimes, rights violations in Kashmir

Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi unveiled a dossier detailing war crimes and human rights violations committed in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

AP

Indian paramilitary soldiers patrol near the site of a grenade attack at a busy market in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir, on September 10, 2021.

Pakistan's government has presented a 131-page dossier detailing a series of atrocities committed by the Indian government in Indian-controlled Kashmir.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pakistan's foreign minister, presented the dossier during a joint press conference in Pakistan's capital city Islamabad, along with the Federal Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari and National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister of Pakistan Moeed Yusuf.

The dossier contains incriminating audio, video and documentary evidence on gross human rights violations, war crimes, genocide, and torture against the Kashmiris by India in Kashmir.

The foreign minister said the government has decided to compile it following the Indian government's crackdown that followed the death of Kashmiri resistance leader Syed Ali Geelani, including charging members of his family under an anti-terror law for raising anti-India slogans and wrapping his body in the Pakistani flag.

"We decided that considering the situation there, and the kind of government's thinking present there, we should play our role and unveil the real face of this government [India] claiming to be the world's biggest democracy before the world," Qureshi said at the press conference, according to Pakistan's oldest daily, Dawn.

The dossier's three chapters include one on war crimes by the Indian army, a second on the local resistance movement, and a third on demographic change.

Qureshi said the majority of the references in the dossier were from international and Indian media outlets as well as international human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. The document features lists of violations including rape, enforced disappearances and torture, from the nineties to recent years. It also names 1,128 perpetrators allegedly involved in war crimes.

"They know who has disappeared"

Qureshi said India should "proceed against the perpetrators who have been highlighted in this dossier."

He added India should "put an end to demographic change", lift a "military and digital siege" as well as release all political prisoners. He also called for the UN and other international organisations and observers, including journalists, to be granted unhindered access.

"The Indian state would have all the figures, they know who has disappeared, so countries and human rights organisations need to target the Indian government to get the data from them," said Shireen Mazari, Pakistan's Federal Minister for Human Rights.

At the time of writing, India had not responded to the publication of the dossier.

Kashmir is divided between India and Pakistan and has been claimed by both since they won independence from the British empire and began fighting over their rival claims.

Since 1989, an armed rebellion has raged in Indian-controlled Kashmir seeking a united Kashmir - either under Pakistani rule or independent of both countries.

In August 2019, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi split Jammu and Kashmir - then the country's only Muslim majority state - into two federally-administered territories.

The region is one of the most heavily militarised in the world. Tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces have been killed in the conflict.