Human Rights

Will no longer communicate with your Rapporteurs: India tells UN body after report on abuses in Kashmir

India has informed the United Nations body that it will no longer entertain any communication with the Human Rights Council’s Special Rapporteurs on its report detailing abuses in Kashmir, reported the Hindu.

The report from the UN body came at the same time a report from two NGOs in the State on the alleged cases of torture was released in Srinagar, which was endorsed by a former UN Special Rapporteur.

On Monday, the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) and the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) released the first comprehensive report on torture in Jammu and Kashmir titled Torture: Indian State’s Instrument of Control in Indian Administered Jammu and Kashmir.

The report focuses on torture perpetrated in Jammu and Kashmir by the Indian State since 1990, and provides a contextual understanding of various phases of torture being perpetrated in Jammu and Kashmir since 1947. Using 432 case studies, the report charts out trends and patterns, targets, perpetrators, sites, contexts and impacts of torture in Jammu and Kashmir.

Currently, Special Rapporteurs on extrajudicial executions, torture, and right to health, Agnes Callamard, Dainius Puras and Nils Melzer, had referred to a June 2018 report of the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR) and written to the government in March 2019, asking about steps taken by New Delhi to address the alleged human rights violations listed in the report, The Hindu reported.

Rejecting all the claims, the Indian Permanent Mission to the United Nations in Geneva replied to the OHCHR on April 23, saying that “India… does not intend to engage further with these mandate-holders or any other mandate-holders on the issue,” whom it accused of “individual prejudice”.

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