A week after Amnesty International asked the armed groups in embattled Kashmir to stop killings of civilians, the international rights body announced to launch a campaign to urge Chief Minister Omar Abdullah to stop abuses committed by the State police.
The campaign titled, ‘Pick up your pen to stop police abuse!’ would be launched on Monday through social networking sites and telephone lines. “As part of the campaign, the people of J&K want the Chief Minister to take concrete steps to stop police practices that have facilitated administrative detentions, torture, ill-treatment and other human rights violations in Jammu & Kashmir for years,” a statement of the Amnesty’s India chapter said on Sunday.
Omar Abdullah is also the Home Minister of J&K State and Chairman of Unified Command Headquarters, an anti-insurgency grid comprising heads of police, civil administration, paramilitary forces, Army and the intelligence agencies.
In support of this campaign, Amnesty International wants the CM to take a stand of “zero tolerance” for human rights violations in the Valley, and the first step is to address police abuses facilitated under the Public Safety Act or similar legislation, the statement said.
By referring to “Valley”, the AI has restricted the campaign to Kashmir Valley and deliberately left the Jammu region where reports of police abuse have been emanating from time to time, a human rights lawyer Muhammad Ashraf said.
Even as separatist groups were demanding permission to AI teams to observe rights situation in jammu & Kashmir since early 1990s, the Government of India was reluctant in allowing them. However, of late the Government has permitted the rights group to visit Kashmir, apparently because the level of violence has receded and the number of incidents of rights abuses has significantly dwindled.
The statement said that the campaign would launch on April 1. “A global petition to support the campaign will launch on Facebook on the 1st and close on 1 June. By that time Amnesty International aims to have the Chief Minister issue an administrative order directing detaining authorities to not repeatedly detain individuals under multiple, consecutive PSA detention orders, and ensuring PSA detention records maintained by the J&K Ministry of Home Affairs are made publicly accessible”, the statement added.
Amnesty claimed on the basis of its “research” that police authorities detain people repeatedly under the Public Safety Act despite courts ordering their release. In addition, families are often left in the dark about where their loved ones are detained.
Two years ago, the Amnesty researched the impact of the PSA in Jammu and Kashmir and declared the legislation as “lawless law”. The PSA allows the government to detain any person for two years at a stretch without court trial.