The Perils of Impunity in Indian-occupied Kashmir: A Decades-Long Struggle for Truth and Justice
Altaf Hussain Wani
In a poignant address to the United Nations General Assembly, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk underscored the enduring agony of families awaiting answers about missing loved ones in conflict zones. To make people disappear has become an ‘efficient’ tool of war and repression. This practice of making people disappear is now known as enforced disappearance, which has now been recognized as a ‘crime against humanity’. Both genocide and crimes against humanity are often associated with the use of mass graves or nameless graves to conceal the crime and also prevent individual identification. Over the past twenty years, forensic experts have been contracted or subcontracted to investigate such mass graves by truth commissions, local courts and international tribunals, and local and international human rights and family associations in more than forty countries across the globe.
This anguish resonates deeply in Indian-occupied Kashmir, where enforced disappearances over the past 34 years have left thousands of families trapped in a limbo of grief and uncertainty. Amid global calls to address this crisis, Kashmir’s struggle against impunity reveals a harrowing tapestry of systemic violence, enforced disappearances, unmarked graves, torture, extrajudicial killings and relentless repression of dissent.
Mass graves are present in Jammu and Kashmir too. The war of suppression unleashed in 1990 by the Indian occupation forces has produced an immense humanitarian crisis in Kashmir. A high unnatural death toll of more than 970,000 persons, primarily in the age group of 18-35, detention and torture of countless persons, massacres, custodial killings, fake encounters, rape and molestations are some of the shocking results of this violent campaign of state terrorism carried by these occupation forces.
Reports like “Buried Evidence”: “Facts Underground” and Dead but not Forgotten” documented by the Jammu Kashmir coalition of civil society, the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons and the International Tribunal for Peace and Justice, present a stark reality of enforced disappearance and unmarked mass graves in Indian occupied Kashmir.
Since the eruption of the current phase of the freedom struggle in 1989, according to the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP)8,000 – 10,000 Kashmiris have been subjected to enforced disappearances,
These cases, meticulously documented by the UN Working Group on Enforced Disappearances (UNWGEID), often involve occupation forces detaining individuals who are never seen again. The Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies (JKCCS) estimates that over 7,000 unmarked mass graves across the region, were discovered in the region. A 2011 report by the now-disbanded State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) confirmed 2,730 unidentified graves and recommended forensic investigations, but authorities ignored these calls, burying hopes for accountability.
Faces of Tragedy: From Pathribal to Half-Widows
The 2000 Patrial fake encounter epitomises the culture of impunity. Five civilians were branded as “foreign militants” by the Indian Army, only for investigations to later expose their innocence. No convictions followed. Similarly, in 2018, Abdul Rehman Padder, a carpenter, vanished after being detained by security forces. His family’s search mirrors the plight of, the latter his body was found in a grave where he was buried as a foreign militant. Kashmir’s 3,500 half-widows—women whose husbands disappeared, leaving them in legal and social purgatory. Many mothers, like those in APDP’s protests, have died awaiting answers, their grief compounded by stigma and economic hardship.
Organizations like APDP and JKCCS, led by figures such as advocate Parveez Imroz, Parveena Ahanghar (the “Iron Lady of Kashmir”), and detained human rights defender Khurram Parvez, have spearheaded the fight for justice. Their efforts face brutal backlash: Khurram Parvez remains jailed under anti-terror laws, while the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society and Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons have been subject to silence after their officer were raided and sealed in 2020. while journalists and HRDs risk harassment, raids, and charges under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) further shields perpetrators, legitimising extrajudicial violence.
International Scrutiny and Hollow Promises
In 2009, the EU Subcommittee on Human Rights urged India to conduct forensic examinations of mass graves—a plea met with silence. The UNWGEID has repeatedly pressed India to ratify the International Convention on Enforced Disappearances, a step the government avoids to evade accountability. Despite the High Commissioner’s emphasis on multilateral action, India dismisses international criticism as “interference,” even as families endure endless waits.
The High Commissioner’s appeal—to end impunity, prioritize victims, and uphold multilateral justice—echoes the demands of Kashmiri families. Forensic investigations, prosecutions, and reparations are not merely legal obligations but moral imperatives. As the global community rallies around mechanisms like Syria’s Missing Persons Institution, Kashmir’s victims deserve no less.
The world must heed the cries of Kashmir’s mothers, half-widows, and activists. To ignore them is to betray our shared humanity. The pain of the disappeared may deepen, but so too must our resolve to seek truth—for without justice, peace remains a distant mirage.
The writer is the Chairman Kashmir Institute of International Relations (KIIR)
Can be reached at ; [email protected] x @sultan1913
