Human Rights
JKCCS releases report on violence against children documenting killings, arrests and sexual abuse
‘The killing of 318 children constitutes 6.95% of the civilian killings in last fifteen years’
Children were direct targets of state violence, as part of its stated offensive to curb uprising and militancy’
The Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), a body documenting human rights violation in Jammu and Kashmir, on Friday, released a report on the impact of violence on the children living in Kashmir.
The report titled, Terrorized: Impact of Violence on the Children of Jammu and Kashmir (2018) is an assessment of the violence against children in JK in the last fifteen years and gives data on killings, arrests, mass violence, sexual violence perpetrated against children.
The JKCCS said, “children in Jammu and Kashmir are living in the most militarized zone of the world, with the presence of 7,00,000 troopers, which exposes them to the risk of all grave six violations against children as laid out in United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.”
The report provides statistics, graphs, figures, and the analysis of killings of children in the last fifteen years (2003 to 2017) in various incidents of violence in Jammu and Kashmir. “With providing examples of targeted state violence against children, the report demonstrates that children have not been viewed differently by armed forces and have been targeted and victimized as part of the state’s offensive against the general population,” the JKCCS said.
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The report says that the fifteen-year period from 2003 to 2017, witnessed not less than 318 killings of children (in the age group of 1 to 17) in various incidents of violence in Jammu and Kashmir. “The killing of 318 children constitutes 6.95% of the civilian killings in last fifteen years, as 4571 civilians have been killed in Jammu and Kashmir in the same period (2003 – 2017). In the same period, i.e. from 2003 to 2017, at least 16,436 killings were recorded in Jammu and Kashmir, and the majority of them included alleged militants numbering at least 8537 killings. The numbers indicate that in the last fifteen years Jammu and Kashmir in an average year has witnessed at least 1,095 killings, which belies the government’s claims of ‘return to normalcy’ ” the report reads.
JKCCS alleges that the pattern of killings of children in the fifteen-year period suggests that children were direct targets of state violence, as part of its stated offensive to curb uprising and militancy.
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According to the report, at least 144 children were killed by Indian armed forces and state police in Jammu and Kashmir. Most of the children, at least 110 of them, killed in state violence were shot dead in different incidents of violence, and not less than 8 children died due to injuries inflicted from pellet shot-guns fired by government forces.
