‘WikiLeaks vindicated our stance about HR abuses in IHK’
Hurriyet leaders and civil rights groups have said that the revelations by WikiLeaks about torture of detainees in Jammu and Kashmir has vindicated their assertions about the gross human rights violations being perpetrated by Indian police and troops in the territory.
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq in a media interview in Srinagar said that WikiLeaks had vindicated their stand about the systematic torture prevalent in the jails of occupied Kashmir.
“We have been telling the world for past 21 years about gross rights violations in the territory. This information provided by International Committee of Red Cross to the US embassy is only about the official jails, but there are hundreds of unofficial jails and underground torture cells here where civilians are subjected to third degree torture,” he added. The Mirwaiz said that it was unfortunate that the US, which portrayed itself as champion of democracy and civil rights, had maintained intentional silence over the issue.
Syed Ali Gilani in an interview said that there was nothing new in the revelations of WikiLeaks, as the Indian forces had been resorting to inhuman and brutal torture to crush the sentiments of the Kashmiri people for past over 21 years. “Thousands of civilians have been killed by Indian troops by subjecting them to torture, but world is behaving as mute spectator to the atrocities perpetrated on the people,” he said, adding that he himself was subjected to third degree torture in jails in and outside the occupied territory.
Khurram Parvez, said that it was a testing time for Indian civil society whether it would sit silent or come on streets to put an end to torture and torture chambers in occupied Kashmir. “The revelation by a credible and independent agency is a challenge to the conscience of Indian civil society,”
