Victims of Pathribal fake encounter demand probe by UN team
Srinagar: In Indian illegally occupied Kashmir, families of the victims of Pathribal fake encounter, remembering the martyrs on their 25th anniversary, have urged the United Nations to send a team to prob the killings.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Indian troops had killed five people in a fake encounter in Pathribal area of the district on March 25, 2000, and dubbed them as foreign militants.
These killings followed the massacre of thirty five members of Sikh community by the troops in disguise in Chattisinghpora area of Islamabad district on March 20, 2000 on the eve of the then US President Bill Clinton’s visit to India. It was portrayed by India that the Sikhs were butchered by these ‘foreign militants’ who, however, later turned out to be local labourers in the subsequent investigations.
A few days later of Pathribal killings, eight more people were killed after the troops opened fire in Barakpora village on peaceful protesters who were protesting against the Pathribal killings. The families of victims in Shangus area of Islamabad district, in media interviews, called on the UN to send a team to prob all fake encounter killings and massacres in the territory since 1989.
Juma Khan, 42, a laborer by profession from Brari Aangan village, Bashir Ahmad Butt and Mohammad Yousuf Malik, both from Halan Kapran village in Verinag area, and Zahoor Ahmad Dalal of Moominabad area of Islamabad town were the civilians killed in a fake encounter on March 25, 2000. “How can you expect justice from those who are themselves the perpetrators of the crime? But we will not give up,” vowed a victim. He also sought the intervention of international human rights organizations to bring the culprits to book.
Meanwhile, the APHC spokesman Advocate Abdul Rashid Minhas in a statement in Srinagar paid glowing tributes to the martyrs of Pathribal fake encounter on their 25-martyrdom anniversary. He, reiterated the Kashmiris resolve to continue freedom struggle till complete freedom from Indian subjugation. He said that anti-Kashmir elements and collaborators had always a played role in prolonging the illegal occupation of India over Kashmir.
