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From: zafar minhas
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VI. VIOLATIONS BY INDIAN GOVERNMENT FORCES:
Extrajudicial Executions and Reprisal Killings
The systematic, summary execution of suspected militants by regular Indian forces in Kashmir has been a hallmark of counterinsurgency operations in the conflict. After escalating sharply in 1992-93, when military authorities in Kashmir launched a "catch-and-kill" operation against the militants, these killings have only declined to the extent that some have been subcontracted to irregular state-sponsored forces. There has been no change in policy about the practice. Army and BSF forces have continued to execute captured militant suspects routinely, in violation of international human rights and humanitarian law. In six and a half years of war, such executions and disappearances in Kashmir number well into the hundreds, if not higher.
Most extrajudicial killings carried out by Indian security forces in Kashmir occur after "crackdowns"— cordon and search operations during which all the men of a neighborhood or village are called to assemble for an identification parade in front of hooded informers. Those whom the informers point out are taken away for torture and interrogation, and some are simply taken away and shot. Officials in Kashmir routinely claim that the detainee was killed in an "encounter" with the security forces, or was shot trying to escape. Human rights groups in Kashmir have documented hundreds of such killings . In its annual report covering events of 1995, the U.S. State Department stated that "[H]uman rights groups consider credible reports that dozens of such killings occur every month."58 Detainees have also disappeared in the custody of the security forces.
Since 1994, there have been fewer incidents in which government forces engaged in reprisal killings of civilians or used lethal force on a large scale against peaceful demonstrators. However, incidents in which the security forces have opened fire on civilians during crackdowns have continued. In the two cases described below, those who were shot were clearly identified as civilians. As with other summary executions, the authorities generally claim that civilian casualties during such operations result from "cross-fire."
Security legislation has increased the likelihood of such abuses by authorizing the security forces to shoot to kill and to destroy civilian property. Under these laws, the security forces are protected from prosecution for human rights violations.59
The Killing of Mohammad B. and Sheikh Y.
On January 20, 1995, Indian army forces of the 2nd Grenades unit conducted a crackdown in Batmaloo, Srinagar. At least two men taken into custody by the soldiers were summarily executed. Ghulam B., forty-eight, described the killing of his brother, Mohammad, a forty-two-year-old businessman.
At about 10:00 am on January 20, 1995, I was in my house in Batmaloo, Srinagar, along with my mother and father, Mohammad and his wife and children, and a servant. Mohammad was on the phone to Delhi when we heard gunfire outside, and we all went into a single room. Fifteen minutes later, there was a knock on the door. Four uniformed army soldiers of the 2nd Grenades came inside and pulled my ninety-year-old father, Mohammad, the servant and me outside. The soldiers were accusing us of being "terrorists." They accused Mohammad of being Afghan.
Leaving the father at the house, the soldiers took the men with them, along with a nephew, G. Some twenty-five soldiers were gathered around outside. They ordered the men to get shovels and shovel snow for half an hour. Then four of the soldiers took Ghulam and broke down the door of a nearby house belonging to Ghulam's uncle. Ghulam and Mohammad were made to search some six other houses; the soldiers were looking for guns and militants.60 The search went on for half an hour. Ghulam told Human Rights Watch:
From time to time, the soldiers would hit me and point their guns at my head and tell me they would kill me. Several times while I was with soldiers, they came under gunfire [from militant forces] and they would force me to stand in front of them as they ran and returned fire.
At 11:30am, the soldiers completed the searches of six houses and took Ghulam to a more populated neighborhood in the same area. At that point, he saw the soldiers take Mohammad away. An announcement was made through the loudspeakers at the mosque that everyone in the area should come out of their houses and assemble outside the graveyard. Ghulam continued to search apartments in the area with the soldiers and six other civilians.
At about 4:00 pm Ghulam was with the soldier when they again came under heavy gunfire. The soldiers fired back, again using him as shield. A number of soldiers were injured in the fire, and Ghulam and other civilians were ordered to carry the wounded soldiers to army vehicles at the main intersection. As they began to do so, one of the civilians, Hassan Shah, a retired policeman who was over sixty, was shot in the arm.
We asked permission to carry Shah to the SMHS hospital, half a kilometer way, on foot and by auto rickshaw. Mohinder Singh, commander of the 2nd Grenades, allowed us to do so. I ran away to mysister's house and phoned my mother. She asked me, "Where is your brother? I told her I did not know. I stayed at my sister's house that night.
The crackdown was on a Friday. On Saturday, in Nagerwal, residents reported that two bodies had been thrown out of the window of a nearby school at 4:00 pm on the day of the crackdown, and that the bodies were riddled with bullets.
On Saturday, Ghulam went to the Ram Munshi Bagh police station and found Mohammad's body.61 He described the condition of the body:
There was blood around the mouth and blood on his hands. There were two other bodies there as well. I asked for the body back, and the police had me sign a paper for it.
A neighbor, Sheikh A., was with Mohammad after the soldiers took him away. He told Human Rights Watch that the soldiers came to his house and ordered him and his nineteen-year-old son, Sheikh Y., to come with them.
At 9:00am I was in my house with my wife, son and daughter. Sheikh Y. went outside to buy some food, but returned to say that the army was nearby. All of us went upstairs to the second floor. The soldiers knocked on the door, entered the house and yelled for all of us to come downstairs or we would be killed. The soldiers took me and my son outside and took us in the direction of the government middle school in Lachmanpara, which is commonly used as an interrogation center during crackdowns. Before we arrived at the school, the soldiers told me to go to the graveyard nearby. I went and found twenty-five or thirty other people sitting there. I could hear the soldiers questioning my son. They were accusing him of firing on soldiers. My son denied it. Then a soldier took him inside the school. As I sat in the graveyard, I could hear cries from my son inside the school. I stood up, but Mohammad, who was with him in the graveyard, warned me to sit down, as the soldiers were nervous and might shoot me.
A short while later, the soldiers came up with an informer who surveyed the group of men seated at the graveyard, then pointed at Mohammad and said to the soldiers, "Take him, he is a militant." The soldiers told Mohammad to stand up and called him an "Afghani [sic] militant." Mohammad told them he had a grinding machine and was a businessman, not a militant. The soldiers took him into the school. Then the soldiers took Sheikh A. and the others in the graveyard and made them sit in snow. They were kept at the graveyard until 9:00 pm
In the afternoon some people were taken from the cemetery and were made to carry metal pipes. When they were brought back to the cemetery, they told Sheikh A. that the soldiers had used the pipes to spray kerosene on the mosque in the area, which the soldiers had then burned down. Later in the afternoon, Sheikh A. was also made to carry pipes, and he saw the mosque burning. Then he was brought back to the cemetery. At 9:00 pm the men were allowed to go home. Sheikh A. returned with a gas lamp to search inside the school, but was unable to find anyone. Later that night a neighbor told him that two bodies had been thrown from one of the school's windows. He examined the site and found blood on the snow nearby but no bodies. Later that night, at Jammu and Kashmir, he learned from a police officer that three civilians from Batmaloo had been killed earlier that day in "crossfire" between the army and the militants. Sheikh A. told Human Rights Watch/Asia:
The following day, in the morning, I went to the police station at Ram Munshi Bagh, but I was told that the bodies were not there, but were at the Joint Interrogation Center, Sonawar. I went there, but they were not there. I went back to the police station where I saw trucks with the bodies of my son, Mohammad and a third man. After that I went to the police station to file an FIR against the army for the deaths of my son and Mohammad. But I was told by a friend, who is a police officer, that he hadbeen told not to accept any FIRs against the army or security forces. Then I went to the district magistrate, who ordered the police to accept the FIR. So the police registered the FIR on February 7, 1995.
The Killing of Ghulam Ahmed Bhat
Ghulam Ahmed Bhat, eighteen, was killed by troops of the Seventh Battallion of the BSF on December 21, 1995. As a result of a childhood illness, Ghulam had been unable to hear or speak since he was four years old.
At about 10:00am on December 21, Ghulam was standing in a lane in front of the house in Bulbulankar, Nawakadal, in Srinagar, along with his mother and a number of other people. The neighborhood was unusually crowded because a procession was planned in honor of Kurshid Ahmed Bhat, chief of the Al Jihad Force who was killed on December 17, 1995.62 A crackdown was just beginning, and BSF troops from the Seventh Battallion, under Commander "Peter" Sharma, entered the neighborhood. Seeing the BSF soldiers running, Ghulam started to run and his mother ran after him to protect him.
After running along a long, narrow lane, Ghulam stopped and tried to show the soldiers that he was deaf and dumb. Then he started running again. Ghulam's mother told Human Rights Watch/Asia:
Three soldiers came after him, and one fired a machine gun burst, killing him. One soldier then kicked the body to make sure he was dead. I began crying, but the soldiers would not allow me to take Ghulam's body. About half an hour after he was shot, two or three BSF soldiers came to the area. One put a pistol on Ghulam's chest; and the other one put bullets in the pocket of his pheran. At 2:00pm, the crackdown was lifted, and the Jammu and Kashmir police arrived. They screamed at the BSF that the boy was not a militant and that they should not have killed him.
The police took the body to the police station. At 5:00pm, the body was brought home by neighbors. There was a bullet wound in the back of the head. At the time the body was handed over from police, the mother's brother, Mohammad Siddiq, was made to sign a blank paper. The next morning, two shopkeepers and a neighbor came to the mother's house and said they were coming on behalf of Commander "Peter" Sharma and said that he would pay her Rs. 200,000 not to bring a case against the BSF in court. She did not accept, and filed a case against the BSF.
The Killing of Khurshid Ahmed Bhat
Khurshid Ahmed Bhat, alias "Khalid Javeed," former head of Jihad Force, was killed after being taken into custody by BSF forces on December 18, 1995. At 9:30pm, a patrol party of several BSF vehicles came to the neighborhood of Butyar, in Srinagar. From his upstairs window, N.D., a witness, saw BSF troops encircling the house of one of his neighbors. At 10:30 pm, they entered the house and N.D. heard cries coming from the house. N.D. told Human Rights Watch/Asia:
The BSF brought my neighbor and his son out of the house and into the inner courtyard. They beat them and asked them where Javeed was. They said they did not know. One of the soldiers knocked the father to the ground, and when his wife came out and pleaded with the soldiers not to beat her husband and son, one soldier ripped off the top portion of her pheran and struck her on the chest. When the daughter came out the soldier did the same to her. At this point, Khurshid Ahmed Bhat walked out of the house. The soldiers immediately hit him with their rifles on his thighs and on the back of his head. Blood came out of his mouth. The soldiers then took hold of the daughter and told Khurshid to ""engage in nasty acts with her." He refused and said "I am the man you want, that's it."
The soldiers put Bhat into a truck and drove away. They left at midnight. The next morning, BSF soldiers came to the area and fired shots into the air for more than half an hour, and then withdrew. Shortly after that, the Jammu and Kashmir police came and told the residents that a dead body had been found, and they needed someone to come and identify it. N.D. went with others from the neighborhood to see the body at the local police station. N.D. described the condition of the body:
There was a lot of blood and several wounds on the forehead and nose, a cut in the mouth, wounds on the back and chest, cuts on the legs and arms, and a broken elbow.
Human Rights Watch/Asia saw photographs of the body. There was a bullet wound in the forehead, a bullet wound on the nose and a large open wound on the back of the head. There were also scrapes and cuts on the chest and mouth.
In an official report of the killing, the government claimed that Bhat died in an encounter with security forces.
Bhat's relatives have stated that they were approached by BSF Commander "Peter" Sharma, whose troops were responsible for the murder, and offered money not to bring a case in court. The family refused and has registered a case against the BSF. To Human Rights Watch/Asia's knowledge, no investigation has taken place.
The Shooting of Ghulam M.
In some cases, the security forces have opened fire on civilians even after the civilians have identified themselves. Ghulam M. was shot and injured by BSF soldiers outside his home in Ganderbal, thirty kilometers north of Srinagar, on December 6, 1995.
At about 8:00pm, I heard gunfire near my house. An hour later, I went outside to my shop to make sure that my two sons, who worked there, were safe. I was accompanied by a cousin and another son. We were carrying a gas light. As we reached the shop, we saw a soldier wearing white military boots lying on the road. He called out, "Who are you?" I replied that we were civilians. Then shots rang out. I was hit by a bullet in the right knee. My son cried out, "You've shot my father," and the BSF soldier yelled abusive language at him.
Ghulam M. was taken to the Bone and Joint Hospital, and his right leg was amputated from above the knee.
Torture
Torture has remained a constant in Kashmir. In his report of January 9, 1996, U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture Nigel Rodley stated:
[The Special Rapporteur has] received information that torture was practiced routinely by the army, the Border Security Force (BSF) and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) against the vast majority of persons arrested for political reasons in Jammu and Kashmir. Official investigations into allegations of torture, including those that resulted in custodial deaths, were said to be rare. On the few occasions when such investigations had taken place, they were carried out by the security forces themselves, rather than by an independent body.63
There is no evidence that the government of India has taken serious steps to curb the practice of torture in Kashmir. Most detainees taken into custody by the security forces in Kashmir continue to be tortured. The methods that have long been practiced in the state are fairly crude, and the security forces have demonstrated little concern fordisguising injuries caused by torture. These methods include prolonged beatings, electric shock, burning with heated objects and crushing the muscles with a wooden roller. Detainees are generally held in temporary detention centers, controlled by the various security forces, without access to the courts, relatives or medical care.
Although the government has made some effort to publicize courts-martial and punishments of security personnel who have committed rape, many charges of rape continue to go uninvestigated. As with other methods of torture, rape has been used to punish suspected militant sympathizers and create a climate of fear.
Detention Procedures that Facilitate Torture
Torture usually takes place in interrogation centers operated by the security forces, and it almost always occurs in the first hours or days after the victim is detained. Every security force has its own interrogation centers in Kashmir, which include temporary detention centers at BSF, CRPF and army camps, hotels and other buildings that have been taken over by security forces.64 Detainees are first interrogated by the detaining security force for periods of time which may range from several hours to several weeks. During this time the detainee is not produced before a court or given access to anyone outside the interrogation center. Those suspected of being militants may then be interrogated at Joint Interrogation Centres (JICs) at which each security force is represented. Detention at the JIC may last for months.
Indian security personnel routinely ignore procedural safeguards designed to prevent torture when taking persons into custody. Although Indian law requires that everyone taken into custody must be produced before a magistrate within twenty-four hours, in fact, detainees are rarely produced at all.65 Prohibitions and safeguards against torture in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Code of Criminal Procedure (CCrP),66 which prohibit the use of coerced confessions and prescribe inquiries into deaths in custody and prison terms for officers guilty of torture, are also routinely disregarded. To Human Rights Watch/Asia's knowledge, the government has never made public any action it has taken to hold security personnel responsible for torture in Kashmir criminally liable for their actions. The U.N. Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials (Resolution 34/169, December 17, 1979) states, in Article 5, that "no law enforcement officials may inflict, instigate, or tolerate any act of torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment nor may any law enforcement official invoke superior order in exceptional circumstances such as . . . internal political instability or any other public emergency . . . as justification for torture."
Lawyers in Kashmir have filed more than 15,000 habeas corpus petitions since 1990 calling on state authorities to reveal the whereabouts of detainees and the charges against them. However, in the vast majority of cases, the authorities have not responded, and the petitions remain pending in the courts. A large number of bail applications are also pending. Even when the High Court has ordered state authorities to produce detainees in court or release those against whom no charges have been brought, state and security force officials have refused to comply. Lawyers have also filed petitions charging officials with contempt for non-compliance, but these petitions have also received no response.
Under pressure from the authorities, the courts routinely grant government officials extended time to respond to petitions. Detainees who have been held for up to a year have not been granted access to legal counsel. The Jammu andKashmir Bar Association has a list of 100 persons held as of October 1995 in one joint interrogation center in Kotbalwal, near Jammu. They have been held there without charge after they were first detained for one year under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act. In some cases, after a year had passed without formal charges being brought, the security forces filed another FIR to hold the detainee on the pretext of a new investigation. Fearing reprisals, judges have been reluctant to challenge the actions of the security forces.
In response to a petition about the mistreatment of detainees in the state, in October 1994, the Jammu and Kashmir High Court ordered that in each district a committee be created of district judges, district magistrates, senior superintendents of police (SSPs) and district medical officers to visit every jail and interrogation center and submit a report to the High Court about the conditions and facilities every two weeks. In May 1995, the state government appealed the order, and a Division Bench made up of two judges of the High Court affirmed the initial ruling, with the amendment that the reports be submitted every two months. However, the security forces refused to provide lists of the detention centers, so that as of January 1996, the court had received only four reports in total from the thirteen districts in the state in the eight months since the court's ruling.
In December 1995, the district judge in Anantnag complained that the army had not provided him with a list of detention centers, and as a result he was only able to visit the JIC in Anantnag. He reported that at the JIC, many detainees were detained "not pursuant to any law." He noted that fifty-two detainees were housed in "five small cell type rooms... Patently, the accommodation is too short to lodge dozens of persons ... [A]ll ... complained about the lack of medical facilities." 67One year earlier, he had documented torture by the security forces, including forcing detainees to sit for extended periods of time in cold water, electric shock, pulling the legs apart at a wide angle, and suspending detainees upside down . In his December 1994 report, the judge noted that marks of violence on the detainees were "quite visible." 68
There is no question that civil and security officials in Kashmir are aware of the widespread use of torture. Petitions pending before the Jammu and Kashmir High Court provide ample documentation, including medical evidence, of the systematic use of torture.
Torture of S.K.
Human Rights Watch/Asia interviewed S.K., a student, who was arrested by Commanding Officer Joshi of the 81st Battalion of the BSF on January 25, 1995.
Commanding Officer Joshi accused me of being a Pakistani national. At the BSF base camp I was brought to some other Kashmiris to speak with them so they could check my accent. They kept me in base camp until January 27. On the morning of January 27, my hands and legs were tied to the bed, and I was made to lie back on a steel bed. Uniformed BSG soldiers put a piece of cloth in my mouth. Three of them leaned on my chest and head. Then they pumped water into my nose. I was suffocating and choking. I started bleeding from my mouth. Then the soldiers turned me over and beat me on my back and feet with a long iron rod. They also hit me with a leather belt which they had dipped in water. My back was bleeding. There was blood splattered on the wall in the room. Then they made me lie down face up on bed again and tied my hands and feet to bed. They applied electric shock to my feet, genitals, chest, and tongue for twenty minutes in all. Two wires—one on either side of my body—were attached to a generator with a crank which one of the soldiers turned. If he turned the crank fast, the shock was severe; if he turned it slowly, less so.
The following day S.K. was shifted to the BSF Papa II interrogation center in Srinagar where he was interrogated by a BSF officer who had "SP"[superintendent] on his uniform and was called Vikas by his subordinates.
He told me that if I spoke on the telephone with my uncle in Karachi, they would not torture me. I have no uncle in Karachi. He said if I would not admit to being a Pakistani national, they would torture me. He said, "First we will destroy your kidneys, then your lungs, then you will die." I was tied to the bed with my legs spread out at nearly a 180-degree angle. For the next thirty minutes, I was again given electric shock to my legs and genitals, and they took lit matches and burned my beard, and finally they applied shocks to my head until I fell unconscious. At one point during interrogation, Vikas, the BSF officer said, "No one knows you are in our custody; we can just throw you in the river and no one will ever know."
When S.K. woke up, BSF deputy inspector general Rajinder Mani, the BSF chief interrogator, began questioning him about public opinion in Kashmir. On the evening of January 30, a doctor examined S.K. because he had not urinated in thirty-six hours, had swelling all over his body and bloody stools. He was given some medicine, but the swelling continued. On February 2, S.K. was transferred to the Badami Bagh Cantonment army hospital, where he described how he had been tortured. He was given penicillin. However, S.K. was afraid to tell them that he was allergic to penicillin, and the swelling worsened. On the evening of February 2, S.K. overheard a doctor tell a BSF officer from Papa II that his kidneys had failed, that his liver was failing and that he had only six hours left to live. The doctor advised the officer that S.K. "should be thrown on the roadside because it would be a custodial killing if he were to die in the hospital."
That night, the officer came to me and said they would take me to the Soura Institute. Instead, BSF soldiers took me from Army hospital to the police control room in Srinagar. The BSF officer who took me there told me I should not tell anyone in the press what had happened to me. He also said, "if you want to save your life, go to Soura [hospital] yourself." I was at the police control room for two hours. At 8:00pm the Jammu and Kashmir police took me home. At 1:30am I started vomiting pink fluid. The morning of February 3 I was taken to SMHS hospital, where I stayed for two days. My condition worsened. On the morning of February 4, I was taken to the Soura Institute where I remained for eighteen days. I was given five sessions of dialysis so my kidneys recovered. Since then that terrible experience is always on my mind. When I see a BSF officer, there are no words to express what I feel, because that whole episode -- what happened to me -- comes to my eyes. I am still very weak. I tire easily. I feel eighty years old.
Torture of E.
E. a government employee from Srinagar, was arrested by the BSF during a crackdown on November 2, 1995.
At 10:00am I went outside with my sister and asked a BSF officer to allow me and my sister to leave so that she could take an exam. She was allowed to go, but I was not. When I returned home, I discovered that the BSF had already searched the house and left. At 11:30 am several dozen BSF soldiers surrounded the house. Six soldiers entered the house and asked for me by name and said they had to conduct a search of the house again because they had specific information that I had connections with some militants. After they searched the house, they ordered me to come with them. They accused me of knowing the hideout locations of militants. I said I did not. Then they said that militants had been coming to my house. I replied that they did come to my house and to other houses—they enter any home at will and there is nothing we can do to stop them. But since January 1995, no militant had entered my house.
The BSF took E. and one of his neighbors to a nearby BSF camp. Outside one of the buildings, he saw five civilians sitting on the lawn with their pherans pulled around their heads. Some of them were moaning as if in pain. E.was taken to a room where six BSF soldiers were waiting. In the room was a chair, some clothes, and a telephone that is used to send electro-magnetic signals.
I was told to remain standing. They asked me my name and when I told them, several of them cursed me. One asked me,"Tell me where the militants are." I said I don't know. Another said, "They come to your house." I said yes but not since January 1995. Then one of the officers said, "You will not divulge information, so take off your clothes." I hesitated. Then one of the officers struck me on the head several times while another kicked me in the back and said, "Take off your clothes." I took off my clothes. They told me to sit, and I sat on the chair. Then one of them kicked me in the back and said, "You are not an officer here. This chair is for an officer." Then I sat on the floor with only my undershirt on and they told me to sit in front of the chair and put my hands behind me on the chair. Then one of them sat on my shoulders so that I could not move my head or arms. Another one grabbed my legs and forced them apart at nearly 180 degrees—as far as they would go. I began crying.
The soldiers continued to ask E. for the names of militants, and he replied that he did not know any. While the two soldiers were still holding his legs apart, and the third was still sitting on his shoulders, two others stood on his thighs, causing him great pain in the groin. After two minutes of this, one of the soldiers, an officer, asked, "Why do you want to die? Why don't you tell us the names?" E. again denied that he knew any. Two other BSF soldiers came into the room, and they were told to "get the telephone." E. described what happened next:
One soldier then picked up the box and brought it over, and the other pulled two wires out of the box. While the first soldier rotated the crank on the box, the second touched my genitals and thighs with the wires. I cried out. This continued for two or three minutes. Then the officer asked me, "Will you now reveal the names?" I said I don't know anyone. He asked what connections I had with militancy, and I said none except I am a social worker and a Kashmiri. Militants come into our homes as you do; how can we stop them? Then the officer signaled with his hand to the two soldiers holding the telephone apparatus. They again applied the wires to my thighs and genitals for three or four minutes. I was crying at each shock. After that the officer told them to stop. Throughout this the other five officers continued to sit on me and hold my legs apart. The one sitting on my shoulders was pulling my hair. The officer asked if I was married. I said no, and he said, "We will render you impotent if you do not cooperate."
The soldiers gave E. electric shocks two more times. The fourth time one of the soldiers placed a green chili on one of the wires, which increased the pain. E. fell unconscious, and when he came to, a soldier told him to stand up and helped him walk around the room. When he came outside he saw the soldiers who had interrogated him questioning the neighbor who had been arrested with him. E. was told to sit with the others on the lawn, and the neighbor joined them a short time later. At about 3:00 pm, they were taken to BSF headquarters in Srinagar, one kilometer away. On the morning on November 3, they were taken to the Papa II interrogation center, where they were separated. E. was made to wait on the lawn where more than ten other persons were being held. He was not tortured there, but most of the other detainees were called up one by one, questioned and then beaten with canes and leather belts. E. told Human Rights Watch/Asia:
Two detainees were stripped and forced to climb a wooden pole about twelve feet high. Then a BSF soldier would apply shocks to the man with wires. When the man would slip down, crying, they would beat him with lathis [canes]. I also saw at least two persons in Papa II on November 4 who were not able to walk. I talked to one of them. He identified himself as Badshah Khan, district commander of the JKLF in Kupwara, a border district in northwest Kashmir. He told me his back had been burned after kerosene oil had been poured on it. He identified another person there as Alam Khan.
In the evening E. was taken back to the BSF camp. On November 6 he was again taken to Papa II where the soldiers told him he should work for the BSF as an informer. E. refused. That evening, when he was brought back to thebase camp, the Jammu and Kashmir police were called, and he was handed over to them. The police took E. and his neighbor home. Since his torture, E. has suffered numbness in his penis and impotence.
Torture of Feroz Ahmed Ganai
Feroz Ahmed Ganai, a twenty-eight-year-old contractor, was arrested by the BSF on November 29, 1995. On December 12, he was brought to the Bone and Joint Hospital with a gangrenous broken leg and acute renal failure. According to doctors in the emergency ward, Ganai had been brought in by the commander of the BSF 1st Battalion who claimed that Ganai was a militant and that he had broken his leg trying to escape.69 However, Ganai told the doctors that the BSF had broken his leg on the first day of interrogation. Ganai pleaded with the doctors, "Keep me here—otherwise they will kill me."
A doctor who examined Ganai stated that his leg had been broken about fourteen days earlier.
It had become gangrenous, with secondary blistering. The leg below the knee was entirely black at the time he was admitted and had to be amputated. The patient had received no medical care for the injury prior to his admission. Both kidneys had failed because of the gangrene and because of the beatings. The patient was in a state of shock; his blood was infected. He had contusions all over his body and face.
It took the BSF three to four hours to arrange for blood transfusions. But the doctors did not use that blood because upon screening it was found to contain sexually-transmitted diseases. Instead they used the hospital's blood bank and amputated Ganai's left leg from above the knee. On December 13, he was sent to Soura for kidney treatment.
While Ganai was under treatment at the Bone and Joint Hospital and the Soura Institute, he remained in BSF custody. Since his arrest, no family member or lawyer had been permitted to see him. In response to a petition filed by the family, on December 19, the High Court ordered that the family be permitted visits and that one person nominated by the mother be allowed to sit with him at the hospital. However, the BSF ignored the order.
When Human Rights Watch/Asia visited the Bone and Joint Hospital in January 1996, we observed six uniformed BSF soldiers accompanying Ganai, who was walking on crutches, out of the hospital. We have been unable to obtain any further knowledge of his whereabouts or condition.
In response to a letter from Human Rights Watch/Asia, the National Human Rights Commission requested information from the BSF in Kashmir about Ganai's case. BSF Commander S. S. Kothiyal responded with a statement claiming that Ganai, who was a "chief of Jamat-ul Mujahideen [a little-known militant group], was arrested on November 29, 1995, and that when he had tried to escape in heavy snow, he broke his leg. Because Ganai "did not observe proper precautions as advised by the doctor and kept on moving his leg" the leg became gangrenous and had to be amputated. The BSF commander also claims that family visits were permitted.
The BSF statement is flatly contradicted by the testimony of doctors who treated Ganai and by the High Court's December 19 ruling on family visits. According to a statement by the NHRC, as of May 1996, Ganai was in custody at a Joint Interrogation Centre in Srinagar.
Torture of S.
S., a doctor from Tral, a village about forty kilometers south of Srinagar, was arrested by the BSF and tortured. He told Human Rights Watch/Asia that on May 15, 1995, he was arrested by a local BSF commander, "Jamil Khan," whoaccused him of treating a militant who had been injured escaping from Charar-e Sharif.70 He was taken first to a BSF camp in Tral, and then to Lathpora, a BSF camp in Pulwama district.
I was questioned by Intelligence Officer Sharma for about an hour at midnight and for an hour the next morning. On the morning of May 16, I was taken to the BSF camp at Bunar, still in Pulwama district. The BSF commander questioned me, then he put me into a cell in which there were several basins of water, several ropes, several cricket bats, and some electric equipment. About five BSF soldiers were in the room. They kept me there for one hour. First they made me take off my clothes. Then they forced my head five or six times into a basin of water. Then they covered my head with a plastic bag so that I could not breathe. Then they made me sit down with my knees raised and a rod inserted behind and under them while my hands were tied against my legs.
S. was then sent to the Papa II interrogation center where he was questioned further. He was released at 3:00 pm.
Torture of Mohammad I.
Mohammad I., a seventeen-year-old student, was arrested by the 163rd Battalion of the BSF in April 1995 from the old town neighborhood of Srinagar. Along with ten others, he was taken to the local interrogation center at Baramulla. He was kept there for three and a half months. He stated:
I was interrogated six days a week, all day, for the entire time. The interrogation room was a small room with no windows, only a door. There were ropes and wooden clubs and wires and a car battery. On the first day, I was separated from the others, my legs were tied and I was beaten with clubs and a wooden stick with nails in it, usually on my legs, but sometimes on my hands. They repeatedly accused him of being a militant. I told them I was not. They also tortured me with the roller. They made me lie with my legs tied while two soldiers rolled the roller over my thighs until I fainted.71
One day a soldier extinguished cigarettes into Mohammad's right hand to form the letter "F," saying, "You said you wanted freedom." When Human Rights Watch/Asia interviewed Mohammad I. in January 1996, his right hand was still grossly disfigured from the burns.
Mohammad I. stated that he was given electric shock to his testicles for sixteen days. The shocks were given consecutively, lasting two or three minutes, until he would go into convulsions and faint. After the first three and a half months he was shifted to the Baramulla JIC, where he was not tortured. He was held there until December 20 when the district sessions court in Baramulla ordered him released on bail on the grounds of his medical condition.
Mohammad I. had no medical care while detained. According to a doctor who treated him in Srinagar, he has suffered episodes of manic-depression and needs psychiatric treatment. He has also lost 50 percent mobility in his right hand, passes blood in his urine and has become impotent.
Sexual Assault/Attempted Rape by Rashtriya Rifles Soldiers in Wurwun
On the night of December 30, soldiers from the Rashtriya Rifles unit of the Indian army entered a house in Wurwun village, district Pulwama, seventeen kilometers south of Srinagar, assaulted several family members and sexually assaulted and attempted to rape three women. Rahti Akhtar, forty-five, testified that she first heard dogs barking at 11:30 pm When she looked outside, she saw about eight soldiers enter the courtyard and encircle the house. A few approached the door and knocked. The soldiers asked her to give them some food, and she said that she would send it to the camp.She recognized some of the soldiers as ones she had seen in the area. Fahmeela Akhtar, fifteen, told Human Rights Watch/Asia that at 11:30pm, she was awakened by her mother telling her that the army had come. Her mother then tried to call out to their neighbors, but the soldiers yelled at her to keep quiet.
Then Fahmeela's sister, Mubera Akhtar, seventeen, opened the front door of the house. Three army soldiers entered and stood at the door. One said , "Keep quiet, " then bolted the door from the inside. The soldiers were all in uniforms bearing the Rashtriya Rifles insignia, and they were wearing white boots. All three were drunk. Mubera said to one of the soldiers, "If you want to search, please let us go outside, and you search for what you want." The soldier told her to keep quiet and then at gunpoint forced the men into one room and the five women and three children into another and closed the doors. One soldier remained inside the room with the men. Two soldiers were inside the room with the women.
Nazir, twenty-two, and Mohammad, twenty-four, heard their mother's cries and came downstairs. When the soldiers said that they wanted to search, Nazir asked them if the family could wait outside. He told Human Rights Watch/Asia:
The soldiers refused and forced us at gunpoint into one room. One of them hit me with the butt of his gun. They were carrying Kalashnikov rifles. They smelled of alcohol.One soldier stayed outside the room; the door was not bolted. I could hear my sisters' cries from the other room.
Fahmeela told Human Rights Watch/Asia:
First the soldiers forced Mubera and Amira to the floor and lay on top of them and molested them. One soldier pulled off the top portion of my clothes. I opened the door and tried to run, but the soldier caught me and pulled me back and started to molest me. I was screaming.
Nazir and Mohammad managed to escape from their room. Nazir told Human Rights Watch/Asia:
I climbed out the window and went to the front door, where I saw three soldiers standing. I could not enter the house, but I managed to get into the corridor. Mohammad came into the corridor at the same time. Then the soldiers grabbed us and took us outside. I got hold of a congri and threw it at one of the soldiers and slipped away.
The soldiers had bolted the front doors of the two neighbors' houses, but when the residents went to the second floors of their houses and screamed, other residents of the village came and unbolted the doors and the soldiers ran out of the Akhtar house. The crowd pursued them. As they ran, the soldiers fired their guns in the air. The neighbors followed the soldiers to the entrance of the camp. The soldiers had been in the house for about fifteen minutes.
The next day, when the residents noticed that a soldier's cap was scorched, they yelled, "He is one of them!" The soldier claimed that he burned his cap while ironing it.
On the following day, December 31, residents of the village gathered to protest the incident, and soldiers from the army camp attempted to disperse them. The next day, the commanding army officer came with some of the soldiers to the village along with a local officer. Rahti told Human Rights Watch/Asia:
The commanding officer told us not to tell anyone what had happened. He said that in exchange, the army would not search houses in the area or conduct a crackdown in the area or arrest any young men. He said, "We are already involved in two cases of this kind. Please don't involve us in a third case."
Despite this, the residents lodged a formal complaint with the local police. Afterwards, soldiers from the camp came around warning people not to talk about the incident.
As Human Rights Watch/Asia was conducting these interviews, we observed fifteen to twenty soldiers walking rapidly down the road with three young men from the village in their custody: Nazir Ahmed Dar, twenty-six; Khurshid Ahmed Malik, twenty-six; and Javeed Ahmed Rathore, twenty-four. The three were among the leaders of the gathering in the village the day after the attempted rape. As this report went to print, Human Rights Watch/Asia was unable to determine whether the men were detained for any length of time or released.
58 U. S. Department of State, Country Reports. The citation used was printed from a file made available electronically; the quote appears on the first page of the India chapter in the report.
59 On July 5, 1990, the governor of Jammu and Kashmir, Girish Saxena, promulgated the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Ordinance, 1990, which in September was passed by the Indian parliament as the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act. The act authorizes the governor or the central government to declare the whole or any part of the state to be a "disturbed area" if it is found that disturbances in the area are such that "the use of the armed forces in aid of the civil power" is necessary to prevent "terrorist acts" or activities directed towards bringing about secession. In a "disturbed area," the act empowers"any commissioned officer, warrant officer, non-commissioned officer or any other person of equivalent rank in the armed forces" to:
after giving such due warning as he may consider necessary, fire upon or otherwise use force, even to the causing of death, against any person who is acting in contravention of any law or order for the time being in force in the disturbed area prohibiting the assembly of five or more persons or the carrying of weapons or of things capable of being used as weapons or of fire-arms, ammunition or explosive substances....
Also on July 5, 1990, the state government promulgated the Jammu and Kashmir Disturbed Areas Act which similarly grants the security forces enhanced powers to use lethal force in the "disturbed areas" of the six districts of the Kashmir valley and a 20-kilometer belt in the border districts of Poonch and Rajouri in Jammu region. Both acts provide, "No suit, prosecution, or other legal proceedings shall be instituted except with the previous sanction of the State Government against any person in respect of anything done or purporting to be done in exercise of the powers conferred [by the Acts]." The provisions in both of these acts on the use of lethal force directly violate the U.N. Code for Law Enforcement (Article 3).
60 During crackdowns, the security forces routinely order a number of men from the locality to accompany the soldiers searching houses s to act as shields and to ensure that the soldiers will not be accused of molesting women in the houses.
63 United Nations Economic and Social Council, Report of the Special Rapporteur, Mr. Nigel S. Rodley, submitted pursuant to Commission on Human Rights resolution 1995/37 (E/CN.4/1996/35, January 9, 1996), p. 18.
64 Some of the interrogation centers which have been used are: Old Airport (BSF), Hari Niwas Interrogation Center (CRPF), Papa I (CRPF), Papa II (BSF), Red 16 (BSF), Badami Bagh (Army Cantonment), Gogoland -- between the old and new airports (CRPF), Bagi Ali Mardan (Nowshera) (BSF), Lal Bazaar Police Station (BSF), Hotel Mamta, Dal Gate (BSF) and Shiraz Cinema, Khenyar (BSF).
65 This provision is routinely disregarded by police throughout India. Under Article 9 of the ICCPR, "Anyone arrested or detained on a criminal charge shall be brought promptly before a judge or other officer authorized by law. . . and shall be entitled to a trial within a reasonable time or released."
66 Sections 330 and 331 prescribe prison terms and fines for officers guilty of torture. Section 176 of the CCrP requires a magisterial inquiry into any death in custody. The Indian Evidence Act and the CCrP also prohibit the use of coerced confessions.
67 Report of the District Committee Anantnag constituted by the High Court in Public Interest Petition Jalil Andrabi v/s State," December 1995.
68 Office of District and Sessions Judge, Anantnag, Jalil Andrabi vs. State of J&K and others, H.C. petition no. 850 of 1994: Preliminary Report.
69 Having publicized Ganai's arrest as big catch, the BSF apparently did not want him to die in custody.
70 On May 10, 1995, a two-month standoff between the army and militants who had taken refuge in a Sufi shrine in the town of Charar-e Sharief in western Kashmir ended in disaster when the shrine and much of the town burned to the ground.
71 Soldiers usually stand on the roller, thereby increasing the pressure on the leg musclesV. VIOLATIONS BY INDIAN GOVERNMENT FORCES: STATE-SPONSORED "RENEGADE" MILITIAS
Both regular, uniformed Indian army and federal security forces and state-sponsored paramilitary groups have committed serious and widespread human rights violations in Kashmir. These violations have characterized the behavior of regular troops since the conflict began in 1990. While reports of some kinds of abuse have decreased since 1994, such as the indiscriminate use of lethal force against unarmed demonstrators, other abuses, notably summary executions and torture, show no sign of abatement, due in part to the activities of the state-sponsored militias. As noted above, these groups operate without any accountability. Wearing no uniforms, their members cannot be easily identified. There is no one to whom civilians may register complaints about the group's behavior. As one Kashmiri doctor told Human Rights Watch/Asia, "When someone misbehaved, he was wearing a uniform, so he was accountable. We could call his commander. Now, when these renegades misbehave, there is no one to call. No one accepts responsibility for them, though we know the government is sponsoring them."
Human Rights Watch/Asia obtained overwhelming evidence of the fact that these groups are organized, armed and protected by the Indian army and other security forces and operate under their command and protection, despite the Indian government's claims to the contrary. The government uses the groups in a number of ways: as informers who watch and report on the activities of the militants; as spies to infiltrate existing militant organizations; or as members of paramilitary "renegade" organizations to attack members of Jamaat-e Islami and Hezb-ul Mujahidin and other militant groups. Members of these militias are also used to support Indian government policies. In public statements, Koko Parray has indicated his group's support for the elections and intention to field candidates and ensure that people in areas under its control vote despite the militants' boycott.
Government officials have described the recruitment of former militants as a rehabilitation program. While that might be the stated goal of the government's efforts, as of April 1996, no rehabilitation programs were functioning. In an interview with Human Rights Watch/Asia, Gopal Sharma, Inspector General (IG) of Police, acknowledged that since August 15, 1995, the government had agreed to pay Rs. 5,000 [$143] to any militant who surrendered AK-series assault rifles and varying amounts for other small arms. Sharma also stated that upon surrendering their weapons, the militants were supposed to be sent to designated rehabilitation centers where they would be paid Rs. 2000 [$57] a month for sixmonths. At the time that Human Rights Watch/Asia met with IG Sharma, he claimed that one such center had been established in Jammu and another was to be created in Srinagar. However, a report by India Today published in March 1996 noted that no one was lodged at the Jammu center.37 Sharma admitted:
There could be some militants working with the security forces as gatherers of information. Koko Parray's group is thirty strong, maybe 100 strong. Militants are 8-9,000 strong. Some militants who split with their former allies may be able to get the protection of the security forces.
Government officials routinely deny that these groups do anything more than act as informants for the security forces. In a March 1996 report in the national daily Hindu, Jammu and Kashmir Chief Secretary Ashok Kumar denied allegations that the government was providing arms to surrendered militants, stating that "[t]he government will not be party to such a racket. We are not giving arms to the illegal persons." That statement was contradicted by Lt. Gen. (Retd.) D.D. Saklani, adviser to the state governor, who told reporters that the government was going to provide the surrendered militants with licenses for 12-bore guns [shotguns].38 In a report published in the Times of India on March 9, 1996, Colonel K. P. Ramesh of the Rashtriya Rifles stated that surrendered militants were provided arms for their protection and given reward money for providing information.39
During the Human Rights Watch/Asia visit to Kashmir in January 1996, we were informed that these groups have been armed by the government. On several occasions, Human Rights Watch/Asia observed members of these groups moving about openly carrying automatic weapons, in full view of security personnel, even though under the government's rehabilitation program, all surrendered militants are required to hand over their weapons. In one case investigated by Human Rights Watch/Asia, members of Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon, who had detained a hospital worker they suspected of militant sympathies, ordered his colleagues to buy him a pistol so that they could confiscate it and pretend to the security forces that they had succeeded in getting a militant to surrender.40
On several occasions in January 1996, Human Rights Watch/Asia also observed Indian army forces carrying out patrols and other operations accompanied by members of such groups. In one incident, for about three hours on the morning of January 21 in Naseem Bagh, seven kilometers southwest of Srinagar, four men armed with AK-47s blocked the road and stopped every passing vehicle. Accompanying them were six army soldiers of the Rashtriya Rifles unit. A witness told Human Rights Watch/Asia about another incident that occurred at 9:30 am on January 23, 1996. The witness had observed a white car on the main road in Wanbal - Nawgam, six kilometers southwest of Srinagar. In it were six people, all of whom were wearing civilian clothes, including one known to the witness as a surrendered militant. About thirty feet behind the car were seven army trucks and an eighth army vehicle bearing a red cross. All of the vehicles, led by the white car, were proceeding very slowly in a line toward Srinagar.
In January 1996, a taxi driver in Srinagar told Human Rights Watch/Asia that several days earlier he had been approached by two members of a paramilitary group who demanded the use of his taxi. The driver stated that the men told him they wanted to go to a village ten kilometers outside Srinagar. The driver took them, but when they got there, one of the men pulled out a grenade, the other a pistol. One of the men showed a card, which the driver could not see, and said they were "Task Force" and that they needed the car, but they would return it by 3:00 pm that afternoon. Then the men said that they would drop the driver off at a bus stop so he could get back to Srinagar. One of the two men drove. As he drove, they passed by an army camp. The soldiers waved the car by without stopping it. The men dropped the driver off. The driver returned to Srinagar and waited at the taxi stand that afternoon, but the taxi was not returned to him until two days later.
The state-sponsored groups operate with impunity. In an interview with Human Rights Watch/Asia, Police Inspector General Gopal Sharma claimed that "surrendering [did] not relieve [former militants] of legal responsibility for their crimes," and that some had been prosecuted, "but convictions [were] hard to come by." However, another police officer responsible for investigating the activities of these groups contradicted Sharma's assertion, complaining that Army and BSF officers had also secured the release of paramilitary force members when they had been arrested by local police. He told Human Rights Watch/Asia:
The government has recruited criminals who loot and steal and extort and these criminals are living in security force camps. This is the third force—the renegades. It is completely true that they exist. ... It is 100 percent true that police investigate crimes, arrest individuals and then the army interferes and lets them go so they can work with the army as renegade forces.
According to a report in India Today, the government's policy of using surrendered militants for counterinsurgency efforts "has heightened the enmity between the various security agencies operating in Kashmir —mainly the Border Security Force (BSF) and the army—with each trying to score a point by notching up a higher tally of surrendered militants."41 Militants who have surrendered to the army have been beaten by BSF forces for not surrendering to them. The BSF reportedly told some of them to obtain new weapons so that they could surrender again, and the BSF could get the credit.42
Victims of abuse by these groups have testified that the government has deliberately avoided arresting members of these groups even when there was clear evidence of their committing crimes. Residents angry at extortion by the groups have demanded that the administration either disarm the groups or give them uniforms.43 After four journalists were abducted by Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces in July 1995, the security forces made no effort to apprehend leaders of the group, even after Koko Parray acknowledged publicly that he had ordered the kidnaping. Parray was even permitted to hold a press conference on the incident.
The security forces have also been complicit in these crimes. During the journalists' kidnaping, Ikhwan forces were waved through security checkpoints after they had given a prearranged password. The paramilitaries operate in close proximity to army and BSF camps. Some members of these groups have been housed in the camps.
Security too is a major problem, for groups like the Hizbul Mujahedin and HUA [Harakat-ul Ansar] are waiting to bump off the surrendered militants. Fear has set in with the killing of eight surrendered militants and most of them are forced to sleep in army camps at night.44
A witness who was abducted by Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces told Human Rights Watch that he was detained at a house adjacent to an army Rashtriya Rifles camp at Umarheer, Ahmed Nagar, Baspara, three kilometers from Soura hospital. A Rashtriya Rifles bunker stands at the entrance to the house. The local Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon commander, Mohammad Ramzan, who had interrogated the witness, apparently lived in the house. Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces identified two women who were cooking in the house as Ramzan's wife and sister-in-law.
The paramilitary militias have principally targeted Hezb-ul Mujahedin militants and members of the banned pro-Pakistan political party, Jamaat-e Islami. Like their counterparts in the regular security forces, they have also killed civilians in reprisal for militant attacks on their forces. According to a press report, in early February, 1996, Hizbul Mujahedin forces abducted twelve members of a state-sponsored paramilitary group from a house in Bagh-e-Mehtab located near an army camp. The heads of three of the men taken were found later; the fate of the remaining nine is not known. Other members of the state-sponsored group retaliated by dragging an elderly man off a bus and lynching him and burning down eleven houses and seven shops.45
Attacks on Human Rights Activists
Human rights activists have increasingly come under attack in Kashmir. Between April 1995 and April 1996, two human rights monitors were killed and one critically injured.46 The impact on Kashmir's human rights community has been devastating. Lawyers who had formerly taken up petitions on behalf of victims of abuses no longer do so out of fear of reprisals, particularly from the mercenary groups. Many have left Kashmir. The few human rights activists who have continued to document abuses in Kashmir do so at considerable risk to themselves.
The Murder of Jalil Andrabi
The body of Jalil Andrabi, a prominent human rights lawyer and pro-independence political activist associated with the JKLF, was found in the Kursuraj Bagh area of Srinagar on the banks of the Jhelum river on the morning of March 27, 1996. According to press reports, the body was in a burlap bag. Andrabi, who was forty-two, had been shot in the head and his eyes had been gouged out. He had apparently been dead for at least one week. According to eye-witnesses, Andrabi was detained at about 6:00 pm on March 8 by a Rashtriya Rifles unit of the army which intercepted his car a few hundred yards from his home in Srinagar. On March 9, the Jammu and Kashmir Bar Association filed a habeas corpus petition in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, and the court ordered the army to produce Andrabi. However, the army denied that Andrabi was in custody. Over the next two weeks, the court continued to grant the government extensions for replying to the petition.
The murder sparked widespread protests in Kashmir and condemnation from civil liberties groups in India and abroad. In Srinagar, a protest march led by JKLF leader Yasin Malik was broken up by police who beat up members of the crowd, smashed a number of reporters' cameras and seized the body.47 The police also fired shots in the air to disperse the crowd. In a statement released on March 29, the United States condemned the murder and called for a "full and transparent investigation." On April 2, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Jose Ayala Lasso called on the government of India to "undertake a thorough investigation ... with a view to establishing the facts and imposing sanctions on those found guilty of the crime." On April 3, India's National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) announced that it would send a team to Kashmir to investigate the killing.
Andrabi had previously received death threats from government-sponsored so-called "renegade" forces. At about 9:30am on January 29, 1996, two men arrived at Andrabi's house in Srinagar, claiming that they wished to discuss ahuman rights case with him. After confirming that Andrabi was at home, one of the men left, saying that he was going to bring his mother and sister who were waiting outside in a taxi.48 He returned instead with a third man. At that moment, a number of other persons gathered at the house, including Andrabi's brother, who began questioning the men. The three men abruptly left, stating that they would see Andrabi at his office. After they left, witnesses in the vicinity of the outside gate of the neighborhood reported that the three men had returned to two waiting taxis in which eight more men were sitting, some openly carrying weapons.
The next day, at 9:20am, the first two men returned to Andrabi's house. After confirming that Andrabi was at home, they left and returned along with at least two other men in a taxi with license number Reg. JKT-1988. Andrabi told Human Rights Watch/Asia that one of the other men appeared to be wearing a uniform and carrying a weapon under his pheran (a long woolen cape). From an upstairs window, Andrabi took photographs of the men and the taxi. When the men saw him, they abruptly returned to the taxi and left. Local residents reported that on the way to Andrabi's house, the taxi had been escorted by a Border Security Force vehicle until it was within one hundred yards of the outside gate of the neighborhood.
The incident followed several other attacks on human rights activists in Kashmir, and about a week before the incident, Andrabi had told Human Rights Watch/Asia that he had received warnings that he "would be next." Since 1984, Andrabi had filed petitions in the High Court on behalf of detainees and had publicized the fact that the security forces routinely ignored High Court orders to produce detainees in court. At the time he was abducted, he was preparing for a trip to Geneva to attend the meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Commission where he hoped to raise concern about the human rights situation in Kashmir.
The Attempted Assassination of Mian Abdul Qayoom
Mian Abdul Qayoom, forty-six, was until April 1995 the president of the Jammu and Kashmir Bar Association and one of Kashmir's most prominent human rights monitors. Under his direction, the bar association produced voluminous records of human rights violations by Indian security forces in Kashmir. On April 22, 1995, he was shot by two unidentified gunmen. The incident left Qayoom permanently disabled.
At 9:00am on April 22, 1995, Qayoom observed two young men outside his house. They asked him if he was Mian Qayoom and when he replied that he was, they told him that their "boy," Jahangir, was in jail in Jammu and that his case was to be heard before a TADA [Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act] court49 in Jammu. They asked Qayoom if he would appear on his behalf. Qayoom asked them if they had any papers on the case, and they told him that their father was outside in the car, and that they would obtain the papers from him. Qayoom told them to meet him at his office, a building adjacent to the house.
As Qayoom went out the side door of the house toward his office, he saw one of the men walking down the front yard toward the driveway, while the other man stayed near the door to the office. Qayoom unlocked the office door, and he and the second man entered the office together. As Qayoom turned to sit down, he saw that the man had a pistol in his hand. The man fired one bullet into the left side of Qayoom's stomach. As Qayoom fell to the floor, the man fired another shot, which missed. Family members rushed to the office, and the man put the pistol into the side of his pants and ranaway. The family ran after him and saw him get into a white Maruti car. The family put Qayoom in a car and took him to the SMHS hospital. He was there for ten days, and then transferred to the Batra Hospital in Delhi where he remained for ten weeks. His left kidney was removed, and he underwent two additional operations to remove the bullet and repair nerve damage. Despite the operations, Qayoom was left permanently disabled and is no longer able to stand or walk. Jammu and Kashmir police collected the second bullet from the site and an FIR50 [First Information Report] was registered. No one has been charged in the case.
Qayoom had received a warning that he would be killed. He told Human Rights Watch/Asia that on June 30, 1994, while he was in court in Srinagar, a Jammu and Kashmir policeman handed Qayoom a paper marked "secret" in which unnamed sources claimed that Hezb-ul Mujahidin planned to kill Qayoom because of his alleged association with the JKLF. However, Qayoom was not associated with the JKLF but with the Jamaat-e Islami, a banned political party which is pro-Pakistan; the militant organization Hezb-ul Mujahedin is aligned with the Jamaat. After seeing this paper, Qayoom filed a FIR charging that government forces were conspiring to kill him. He also informed the NHRC and Delhi-based human rights activists of the incident.
Qayoom had been arrested on several occasions because of his human rights work and his public statements supporting self-determination in Kashmir. On July 29, 1990, while he was still president of the bar association and president of a political grouping of eleven parties supporting independence, he was arrested by the BSF in Pulwama and charged under the Public Safety Act51 with making a statement calling for self-determination for Jammu and Kashmir.
He was detained for nearly two years. His detention was challenged by the Bar Association in the High Court, and on February 14, 1991, the court declared the detention unconstitutional and directed the superintendent of district jails in Jammu to release him. Qayoom was released but before he could leave the jail he was rearrested and taken to the Joint Interrogation Center (JIC)52 in Jammu. On March 1, the court approved an application for bail, but again, before he could be released, he was ordered detained under the PSA for another year. On February 15, 1992, fifteen days before the detention order was to expire, Qayoom was again rearrested on the same grounds for which he had obtained bail in 1991. He was finally released on February 23, 1992, when the Supreme Court of India rejected the government's appeal of the bail order.
Upon release in March 1992, Qayoom was re-elected president of the bar association. He continued to focus on human rights cases, visiting jails, filing petitions on behalf of detainees, and meeting with international visitors and monitors. In April 1993, when he tried to go on the haj (Muslim pilgrimage) in Saudi Arabia, he and his wife were stopped at the New Delhi airport. In 1994, he was granted permission to go on the haj, but when he returned, he was detained for three hours and his passport was impounded.
He stated that his house had been raided some twenty times since 1990; the most recent was in June 29, 1994, when BSF soldiers searched it in the middle of the night. According to advocates in Srinagar, the bar association virtually ceased functioning after Qayoom's shooting.
Human Rights Watch/Asia requested information from the government of India about the incident. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) stated that the attack on Qayoom "was a sequel to intergang rivalry." The NHRC provided no other information or evidence to clarify this statement, except to say that a police investigation in stillunderway. "Intergang rivalry" is the standard phrase used by the government to downplay abuses by state-sponsored militias. The Home Ministry confirmed that a police investigation was continuing. As of May, 1996, no one had been charged in the shooting of Mian Abdul Qayoom.
These attacks on Andrabi and Qayoom were the latest in a pattern of attacks on human rights monitors. In 1992-1993, three leading human rights activists were killed in Srinagar. On December 5, 1992, H.N. Wanchoo, a retired civil servant and trade unionist who had documented hundreds of cases of extrajudicial executions, disappearances and torture by the security forces, was shot dead by unidentified gunmen. On February 18, 1993, Dr. Farooq Ahmed Ashai, an orthopedic surgeon who documented cases of torture and indiscriminate assaults on civilians, was shot by Central Reserve Police Force troops, who fired at his car, which was marked with a red cross, apparently in retaliation for an earlier militant attack. The troops then reportedly delayed his being taken promptly to a hospital for emergency care. He died shortly after finally reaching the hospital. On March 3, Dr. Abdul Ahad Guru, a leading member of the militant Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) who had documented abuses by Indian security forces, was abducted by unidentified gunmen and shot dead. The government of India has never made public any action it has taken to investigate these killings and prosecute those responsible.53
Attacks on the Press
Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon and other state-sponsored armed groups in Kashmir have demonstrated a particular antipathy toward the press. In July 1995, four journalists with the dailies Greater Kashmir and Naida-I Mushraq were abducted by Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces and held for four days. After ordering several newspapers to temporarily cease publication in November 1995, Koko Parray accused all of the Kashmir journalists of being militants: "There is little difference between the editors and the Hizbul Mujahidin. Journalists are writing posters and pamphlets for them."54 After several days, the papers were permitted to resume publication.
The Shooting of Zafar Mehraj
On December 8, 1995, Zafar Mehraj, a veteran Kashmiri journalist, was shot and critically injured as he returned from an interview with Koko Parray, the head of the state-sponsored paramilitary group Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon, at Parray's headquarters in Hajan, a small town fifty kilometers from Srinagar. Mehraj, forty-three, was working for Zee television, an independent television corporation. He had previously been threatened by both the security forces, who suspected him because of his ties to militant group and his travel in Pakistan,55and some militant groups who resented his contacts with Indian officials. Although the identity of the gunmen who shot him may never be known, the evidence strongly suggests the involvement of state-sponsored militia forces.
The interview with Koko Parray had originally been scheduled for November 26, but Parray would not meet with them then and told them to return on December 8. That day the Huriyat had called a general strike, but the press was free to travel. During the interview Parray met with one of his men for fifteen minutes. After the interview, the journalists declined lunch and left at 12:45 pm When they reached the village of Shaltang, nine kilometers north of Srinagar, they saw a cream colored Ambassador car with its hood up and a man looking inside. As they drove by, the man held up an AK-47 rifle and ordered the journalists to stop. With the man were two other men, all wearing scarves covering their faces and carrying AK-47s. One of them approached the front seat and asked, "What are you doing?" When told that they were journalists, he said, "You were meeting with that bastard, Koko Parray, bloody informer. We are from Hezb-ul Mujahidin." Then the two men went to the back seat window and asked, "You are Zafar Mehraj?" After Mehraj had identified himself, they asked him who he had been to see. When he said he had interviewed Koko Parray, the men ordered him to come with him. Mehraj did not move, so the man pulled him out forcibly.
When one of the other journalists tried to get out, and the same man pointed his AK-47 and said, "If you come out, I'll shoot you. You can move from here after one hour." He was speaking with an unusual accent; he was not from Srinagar. The men put Mehraj in the Ambassador car and drove away. Mehraj described what happened next:
They pushed me into a cab and took my wristwatch and cash, about Rs. 2-3000. [US $57-85] It was snowing hard. They drove for a while. Then at some point they said, "We are with Parray. Are you a journalist?" I said that I was. Then they said, "Oh , we thought you belonged to Jamaat-e Islami. We're sorry. We will let you go." I told them to stop and let me go, but they said, "No we'll leave you where you'll get transport." After that they removed their kerchiefs. At some point I noticed a minibus behind our taxi. The car stopped. The Matador minibus stopped on the other side of the road. They told me that the minibus contained their own "boys" and said they were going to Srinagar and could take me home. They told me to get down from the taxi. I did and as I walked across the road from the taxi to the bus, one of the boys from the bus, who was standing on the road, shouted at me, "Hey! Where are you going?" I turned and saw him take out his Kalashnikov to fire at me. I could see him shivering—he was young, in his early teens. I recited verses from the Quran loudly. Then he opened fire.
Three bullets hit Mehraj. One caused a superficial wound; one entered his left upper back and exited the right upper back; one entered his left upper stomach and exited his right upper stomach. Two or three minutes after Mehraj had fallen to the ground, he heard the taxi and minibus leave together. He tried to wave down passing vehicles, but several passed him before a truck finally stopped. The driver told him that he could not risk his life by helping him, but if Mehraj could climb into the back of the truck by himself, the driver would take him to a place where he could get a lift to a hospital. Mehraj climbed into the truck, and the driver drove approximately ten kilometers to a small market town where Mehraj saw a police constable. Mehraj got out of the truck and told the constable that he had been shot. The constable told him to take a motorcycle taxi to the hospital.
I asked two or three drivers to take me to the hospital but they all refused. Finally I begged a driver on the other side of the road. I said, I have old parents and one young child. Please help me. He told me, "Don't make any noise. Get inside calmly." He took me to Srinagar SMHS hospital, not by the main road but by the back roads. I walked into the emergency room.
Mehraj's transverse colon had been shattered, and he had suffered multiple small intestine injuries. He stayed at the SMHS hospital in Srinagar for five days and was then transferred to an army hospital for two days because the authorities told him that the militants were roaming around SHMS freely. In fact, at the time that Mehraj was being treated there, the SMHS hospital was being patrolled by Ikhwan forces. On December 15, he was transferred to the All-India Institute for Medical Sciences in New Delhi.
After Mehraj had been abducted, the journalists who were with him waited in the car for ten minutes. During that time, two boys came by on their way to a nearby mosque; they were about twelve and sixteen years old.
They spoke Kashmiri. They asked why our friend had been kidnaped. When we said we don't know, they said they were from Hezb-ul Mujahidin. They both laughed and said, "Come on—Hezb-ul Mujahidin can't come here. There have been no militants here for six months. Those guys were Ikhwan—Ikhwan controls this area. Then they walked on to the mosque.
Shortly after that the journalists told the driver to go to Srinagar.
They had driven two kilometers from the spot where Mehraj was taken and arrived at the Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) crossing—a major industrial area. Seeing open shops, one of the journalists decided to stop and ask if any of the shop owners had seen the kidnapers car--a cream-colored Ambassador without license plates. One of shop owners said that ten minutes earlier he had seen a car matching the description headed toward Srinagar. As the journalist walkedout of the shop, he saw the kidnapper's car and the kidnaper who had done the talking during the incident. He told the driver to follow the car, which was headed from Srinagar toward Baramulla.
The journalists followed the car for five or six kilometers, when the kidnapers car stopped. The journalists parked fifty meters behind them. The kidnaper came up to the car and said, "I told you to wait an hour. Why are you chasing us?"
When the driver asked, "What have we done?" the kidnapper struck him in the face. When one of the journalists got out of the car, the kidnapper said, "Look, bastard, the army is coming. Go away."
At that moment, four army trucks filled with soldiers drove down the road—the national highway—from Baramulla toward Srinagar. The trucks passed right by them without stopping even though the kidnaper was standing in the middle of the road with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder, and the two other kidnapers were standing near their car with AK-47s clearly visible in their hands.
At that point, the journalist got back in the car. He told Human Rights Watch/Asia, "I realized that they were renegades, so we drove away to Srinagar."
Four or five days after the kidnaping, a correspondent for the Kashmir Times received a call from a man who identified himself as Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon, and said that the correspondent must come to Sonwar, an Ikhwan camp two kilometers from Srinagar, and that if he did not, "We'll do the same thing to you that we did to Zafar Mehraj." The correspondent did not go; he left Srinagar for Delhi.
On May 6, the Home Ministry informed Human Rights Watch/Asia that Mehraj had been returning from an interview with "the chief of a militant outfit," and that while the incident was still under police investigation, it was "believed that [Mehraj] has been the victim of inter gang rivalry."56
Attacks on Medical Workers
Ikwan-ul Muslimoon forces have been patrolling the Soura Institute and the Bone and Joint Hospital since mid-1995. The local commander is Mohammad Ramzan, a former member of the JKLF who had been arrested by the Rashtriya Rifles in 1995. After that, Ramzan was seen at the hospital accompanied by other gunmen and by army soldiers wearing Rashtriya Rifles uniforms. Ramzan wore a bullet-proof jacket under his pheran [long cloak], as did some of others. He told hospital staff that he "wanted to bring discipline to the Institute."
Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon patrols are sometimes carried out jointly with other security forces. Their activities inside the hospitals, including assaults on staff and detentions of staff, patients and visitors, are carried out with the knowledge of BSF forces, who maintain bunkers at the entrances of the hospitals. A Jammu and Kashmir police station is also located at the entrance to the Soura institute. Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces enter the hospital on a regular basis and patrol in groups of twelve, armed with automatic weapons. They often carry walkie-talkies and speak into them in the course of their searches and patrols.They have threatened and harassed hospital staff and patients, looking for militants, and have taken suspects away to "camps." One such camp is said to be located near the hospital, at an army base three kilometers away at Bachapora, Srinagar.
Before mid-1995, BSF forces themselves used to patrol the hospital, looking for militants. They would conduct search operations, known in Kashmir as "crackdowns," inside Soura, ordering all staff to line up and be searched. Any staff member or patient who is suspected of being involved with the militants is taken away; anyone who resists or objects is threatened or beaten. In November, Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces dragged a surgeon out of his office and kicked and punched him.
At 2:30pm on January 19, 1996, the day that Human Rights Watch/Asia visited the institute, Ikhwan forces were patrolling the main gate of Soura. Hospital employees stated that their presence was routine and that they usually stood only a few yards from the security bunker. Many hospital employees were unwilling to speak to Human Rights Watch/Asia out of fear. Doctors at the Bone and Joint Hospital complained that they were frequently searched by either armed paramilitary forces, while uniformed forces ringed the outside of the hospital, or by both paramilitary and uniformed Rashtriya Rifles forces.
The Murder of Farooq Ahmed Sheikh
Farooq Ahmed Sheikh, a thirty-one-year-old pharmacist at the Soura hospital, was shot dead by Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces on December 2, 1995.
A week or so before the shooting, Ikhwan forces had accosted Farooq in the pharmacy department and forced him to accompany them to the dietetics section of the institute where they assaulted him. After several other pharmacy employees intervened, Farooq was released. After that incident, Farooq told his colleagues at the hospital workers' association that a few days before the beating, he had been on duty at the hospital's emergency drug store. Ramzan's men had come and asked for medicine, and Farooq had refused to give them any. The next day, Farooq had received a message at the pharmacy counter that he should come meet Ramzan, and he did not go. On the day of the beating, Ramzan and his men came to Sheik's department at about noon and took him first to the laundry office and then to the dietetics department, where they beat him. The men pinned his arms behind his back and beat him with gun butts all over his body. A hospital employee who was present told Human Rights Watch/Asia:
I was working when Ramzan and his two bodyguards appeared. I did not see any guns but Ramzan carried a wooden cane. The three of them entered the room where Farooq was working. Ramzan told Farooq to accompany him. Farooq went with him. When he came back half an hour later, he looked pale, withdrawn. He said that the people working in the kitchen had come to his rescue, and that Ramzan and the others had been telling him to come with them and work with them.
Several other employees were beaten by Ramzan and his men around this time. In one incident, Ramzan had four employees taken to a detention camp, but all were released the same day.
At 1:15pm on December 2, Farooq left the hospital's drug store with medicine to take to a patient. A hospital employee told Human Rights Watch/Asia that before Farooq was shot, Ramzan, accompanied by fifteen armed men, was standing in front of the inquiry office in the hospital.
I was standing in line waiting to get paid. Farooq was standing in line in front of me, also waiting to get paid. He carried in his hand a medicine bag with drugs in it. After Farooq was paid, he walked inside the ward block. I got my money and was standing inside the main entranceway. Then I saw Ramzan and his men standing near the entrance to the ward block, kicking anyone who had their hands in their pockets and telling them to take their hands out. After ten minutes I saw that Ramzan and others had entered the ward block; one or two minutes later I heard one gun shot from inside the ward block. Two minutes later I saw Ramzan and his men walking, with guns visible, out of the ward block. As they walked by me and several other employees at the main entranceway, Ramzan said, "Farooq has been shot. He is being taken to the operation theater. Did you see anyone running from here?"
Farooq had been waiting for the elevator when he was shot. He was shot once on the right side of the back of his head. He was operated on almost immediately, but went into a coma and died on December 9. Human Rights Watch/Asia inspected the site of the shooting. It was ten yards away from a window through which a BSF bunker at the hospital entrance is clearly visible, perhaps fifty yards from the hospital. There are also BSF bunkers at several places around the hospital. Given the security presence around the hospital, there is no way someone could fire a gun in the hospital without the security forces knowing.
Shortly after the shooting, Dr. Jalal arrived at the main entrance with his bodyguard, who was carrying a pistol. Ramzan's men accused the bodyguard, but when Dr. Jalal said the man had been with him and had nothing to do with the shooting, Ramzan let him go. The hospital employee continued:
I went to the operation theater. Farooq was conscious and reciting holy verses. After that, he fell into a coma. There was blood all over his head. His hand was holding the back of his head. I left and waited outside the operating theater. Ramzan and his men were running around; two of his men were guarding the operating theater, not letting anyone in. Half an hour after the shooting, Ramzan came before a group of employees holding a bullet. He said, "See, this is a pistol bullet. We don't have a pistol. Someone else must have fired."
After the shooting, Jammu and Kashmir police came to the hospital, but none of the hospital staff was willing to speak with them because Ramzan and his men patrolled the hospital until 7:00pm. The Home Ministry provided a brief report on the incident to Human Rights watch stating that "unknown militants fired upon Farooq Ahmad Sheikh" and that a case has been registered against the "militants."
Detention and Beating of "Ghulam"57
"Ghulam" was a member of Soura Institute's employees' union. In November 1995, he was abducted from the hospital by Ikhwan-ul Muslimoon forces and detained for at a camp near the hospital. While he was detained he was severely beaten. He told Human Rights Watch/Asia that ten to twelve men with automatic weapons forced him into a car outside the hospital entrance. Four other detainees were already in the car; they were all friends and relatives of patients in the hospital. Five or six gunmen, carrying automatic weapons, were standing outside the car talking into walkie-talkies. One of them entered the vehicle and demanded money from the detainees in the car and beat them with the butt of his gun until they handed it over. Fifteen minutes later, at about noon, Ramzan appeared and one of the gunmen asked "Ghulam" to come out of the car.
I was taken to an open area surrounded by several other gunmen. Ramzan ordered his men to shoot me. Two men pointed their guns but did not fire. Then Ramzan and two of the others struck me on the head, face and back with their guns. I fell down. One of them took my watch, money and jacket. Ramzan said to me, "Give me your pistol." I had no pistol and told him so. They carried me off the lawn into the Matador.
"Ghulam" was put in the car, and three of the others in the car were released. The car left the hospital, following a white Ambassador car carrying Ramzan and the others, and stopped at a joint Jammu and Kashmir police station and BSF camp located just outside the entrance to the hospital. After about ten to twelve minutes, Ramzan came out and got back into the Ambassador car, and both cars drove to Soura Chowk, where the fourth detainee was let go. Then both cars went to the Rashtriya Rifles camp at Umarheer, Ahmed Nagar, Baspara, three kilometers from Soura hospital. They pulled up to a house adjacent to Rashtriya Rifles camp, separated by a barbed wire fence. At the entrance to the house was a Rashtriya Rifles bunker. "Ghulam" was taken to a room inside the house, where Ramzan and about ten of his men were waiting. He was stripped and beaten with canes and guns, and again ordered to hand over a pistol. He was then locked in a basement until evening, when he was again beaten and then locked in another room for the night. In the morning, "Ghulam"'s brother came to the house, but Ramzan told him "Ghulam" could not be released until he produced a pistol. "Ghulam" continued to tell them that he did not have one. "Gulam" reported:
Then Ramzan asked my brother to give him some money so that Ramzan could "arrange" for me to "surrender" a pistol. Ramzan told my brother that he would then hand the pistol over to the army so that they could record it and give me an Ikhwan identity card so that so that no one could touch me. Then my brother left. At about 1:00 pm, a number of hospital employees came to the house to see me. Ramzantold them he would not release me unless I resigned from the employees' association. I agreed to do so, and Ramzan told my colleagues to get written consent from Koko Parray to release me so that Ramzan could show the letter to Jalis Khan, the commander of the Rashtriya Rifles camp. At 10:00 pm I was told I would be released the following morning. At 9:00 am the next day, eight people brought me back to the hospital and let me go. After my release I was hospitalized and treated for two days. I immediately resigned from the association, but the association did not accept my resignation. Twice after that Ramzan came here in a civil administration jeep and asked me if the hospital administration was running smoothly now.
46 Two others were detained for months without being charged or tried. On the night of June 15, 1995, Sheikh Mohammad Ashraf, president of the Baramulla branch of the Jammu and Kashmir bar association, which regularly documented abuses by Indian security forces, was arrested by the Rashtriya Rifles unit of the Indian army. He was released on September 9; throughout his detention, his family was denied access to him. Earlier, on May 1, 1995, Mohammad Ashraf, an advocate at the High Court in Srinagar, was reportedly arrested and charged under the Public Safety Act, a preventive detention law. He was later released.
47 Amnesty International, "India: Possible Extrajudicial Execution: Jalil Andrabi, Lawyer, Human Rights Activist," (ASA 20/15/96, 27 March 1996).
48 The ruse was nearly identical to the one used by gunmen who shot the president of the bar association, Mian Abdul Qayoom. See account of Qayoom's case, below.
49 TADA circumvented due process requirements in the criminal procedure system for alleged terrorist activities. The law was allowed to lapse in May 1995; however, hundreds of TADA cases remain pending before the courts. Introduced in May 1985, TADA allowed the state to arrest those suspected of terrorism without producing them before a judicial magistrate for 180 days (a period that could be extended to one year). Under TADA, confessions made before a police officer and no other witnesses could be used as evidence (creating the opportunity for custodial abuse). Trials took place in specially designated courts, often in camera, and the identities of witnesses could be kept secret.
51 The Public Safety Act, enacted in 1978 and amended in 1987 and 1990, empowers the state government to detain persons without trial for up to one year for a broad range of activities and has been widely used to suppress peaceful dissent.
52 There are a number of Joint Interrogation Centers throughout Kashmir, at which the BSF, army, and CRPF and intelligence agencies participate in interrogations.
54 Parray was quoted in Harinder Baweja, "Propping Up the Enemy's Enemy," India Today, December 15, 1995., p. 34.
56 As noted above, the phrase "intergang rivalry" is frequently used by the government to downplay abuses by state-sponsored militias.
57 Human Rights Watch/Asia has used pseudonyms in many of these cases to protect the identities of the witnesses.
Like I stated before, this is COMMUNICATION nothing more and nothing less. Your shit country's forces asked hte question, you will get an answer in the same way. Talk decent, you will get a decent response.
Zafar
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