Srinagar: The Joint Resistance Leadership, comprising Syed Shah Ali Geelani, Mohammad Yasin Malik and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq have directed a petition to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) listing their demand of establishing an independent international commission of inquiry for conducting an extensive investigation into the human rights violations in Kashmir.
The petition was uploaded on change.org and contained the description of the contemporary situation in Kashmir, citing allegations of abuse of human rights by the armed forces on Kashmiri soil.
It has been titled, “Petition on behalf of the People of Jammu & Kashmir to UN Human Rights Council to establish a Commission of inquiry on the situation in Jammu & Kashmir.”
It has called upon the President of the UNHRC Honorable Vojislav Šuc to use his influence for persuading the members of the council.
“The petition has also drawn the attention of the Council towards the pending Kashmir dispute which remains the fundamental cause of the human rights violations and suffering of the people of Jammu & Kashmir and an opportunity to the people of the state to exercise the right to self-determination as promised to them in the resolutions of UNSC,” the JRL said.
This development arrives after the UN published a 49 page report citing human rights violations by armed forces in Kashmir. India responded by calling the report ‘fallacious, tendentious and motivated’.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) had said the report was “overtly prejudiced” and sought to build a “false narrative”.
New Delhi had also lodged a strong protest on the use of terminology in the report, saying that the body had departed from internationally accepted terminology.
BJP had said in a statement that the UN was biased and that it hadn’t done its ‘homework’.
“In a country where even trees and other natural resources are revered, violation of human rights is unthinkable. The said UN seems to have concluded in a biased way without doing the homework. What they have said is totally ungrounded and BJP rejects it,” said Rajya Sabha MP and BJP national media chief Anil Baluni.
