The mystery surrounding Kashmir's graves
By Sanjoy Majumder BBC News, Srinagar
"There's one, and another and over there, another…"
Ata Mohammad Khan squints in the harsh midday sun as he points out mounds of earth on a stretch of land by the side of a river. Each one of them is a grave that he says he was made to dig by the police.Mr Khan is a grave digger in the village of Binyar, in Uri in Indian-administered Kashmir, close to the Line of Control that divides Kashmir between India and Pakistan.
His graveyard is one of several sites that are now in the spotlight, after a report by the State Human Rights Commission on the existence of nearly 6,000 bodies in unmarked graves in north Kashmir.It is the first time a government body has acknowledged what many Kashmiris have been saying for years.'Bloodied bodies'
"The police used to bring the bodies, mostly at night," Ata Mohammad Khan says."Many of the bodies were covered in blood, they had bullet holes, some had broken legs. It's hard to describe, these were not normal deaths."His testimony is one of several that is now in the Commission's report which has been compiled by civil rights campaigners.
"We made public announcements saying that if there were any unmarked graves people should contact us," says Khurram Parvez of the Coalition of Civil Society. "We went to different districts, meeting police, grave diggers, community elders and documented the evidence that we have produced."
Maisuma is in the heart of Srinagar, once a volatile neighbourhood that was a major stronghold of the Kashmiri separatists.At the height of the movement the security forces would conduct raids here, picking up anyone suspected of being a militant.
The family of Syed Anwar Shah live in a dilapidated old building, squeezed into a tiny room.His mother weeps as she tells me how he disappeared 11 years ago. "He left for work that day, I had packed his lunch. The security forces picked him off the street. We didn't even realise what happened.
"I've looked everywhere for him but I haven't found him." Who is buried?
Over the past 20 years, thousands of Kashmiris have gone missing - many after allegedly being picked up by the security forces.
The potent issue of missing people in Kashmir has sparked demonstrations Now the fear is that some of them may actually have been killed and buried in the unmarked graves."Our children were picked up by the army, the police, the special forces. Ask them where they are, ask them what happened to them," says Parveena Ahangar, who leads the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons.
But the chief minister of Indian-administered Kashmir, Omar Abdullah, says it's unlikely that civilians ended up in the unmarked graves."We have evidence documenting the circumstances under which they died. They were militants from various parts of the world who were killed either while infiltrating or in encounters."
But bowing to public pressure, the government has ordered an investigation to try and determine who is buried in the graves.Not many in Kashmir are confident of the outcome.
"The same people who are responsible for the unmarked graves are being entrusted with carrying out an investigation," says hardline separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani."That's why we are asking the United Nations to set up War Crimes Tribunal to investigate this matter."
Whatever happens, the issue has ignited a fresh debate over India's conduct in Kashmir, a conflict zone that is still heavily militarised and in which more than 60,000 people have died in the past two decades.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-15236362--------------------
Mass Graves Hold Thousands, Kashmir Inquiry Finds
By LYDIA POLGREEN
Thousands of bullet-riddled bodies are buried in dozens of unmarked graves across Kashmir, a state human rights commission inquiry has concluded, many of them likely to be those of civilians who disappeared more than a decade ago in a brutal insurgency.The inquiry, the result of three years of investigative work by senior police officers working for the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission, brings the first official acknowledgment that civilians might have been buried in mass graves in Kashmir, a region claimed by both India and Pakistan where insurgents waged a bloody battle for independence in the early 1990s.
The report sheds new light on a grim chapter in the history of the troubled region and confirms a 2008 report by a Kashmiri human rights organization that found hundreds of bodies buried in the Kashmir Valley.
Tens of thousands of people died in the insurgency, which began in 1989 and was partly fueled by weapons, cash and training from Pakistan.
According to the report, the bodies of hundreds of men described as unidentified militants were buried in unmarked graves. But of the more than 2,000 bodies, 574 were identified as local residents.
"There is every probability that these unidentified dead bodies buried in various unmarked graves at 38 places of North Kashmir may contain the dead bodies of enforced disappearances," the report said.
The report catalogs 2,156 bodies found in graves in four districts of Kashmir that had been at the heart of the insurgency. It called for a thorough inquiry and a collection of DNA evidence to identify the dead, and, for the future, proper identification of anyone killed by security forces in Kashmir to avoid abuse of special laws shielding the military from prosecution there.
Thousands of people, mostly young men, have disappeared in Kashmir. Some went to be trained as militants in the Pakistan-controlled portion of Kashmir and were killed in the fighting. Many others were detained by Indian security forces. The wives they left behind are known as half-widows, because the fates of their husbands are unknown. Parents keep vigil for sons who were arrested two decades ago.
Parveena Ahanger's son Javed was taken away by the police on Aug. 18, 1990, and never seen again. An investigation found that he had been killed by security forces, but they have not been prosecuted, she said.
"I never got any response from the government," she said. "I never got his dead body."
After years of fighting in the courts to find out what happened to Javed, Ms. Ahanger was skeptical that the human rights report would get her son's body back, or bring her justice.
"If the high court doesn't give any justice on this issue, what will the state human rights commission do?" she said.
Zahoor Wani, an activist who works with the families of people who disappeared during the insurgency, said that the report was a welcome first step but that the government must identify the dead and allow families to bury their relatives."It is a very good thing that they acknowledge it," Mr. Wani said. "These families have been living in a hope to see these people again."They are neither dead nor alive," he said. "We need to move them to one pole or the other."
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