Screams in the night in J&K
The soldiers came after midnight, Abid Khan says, his hands trembling, one of around two dozen young men in just one part of Kashmir who say they have been tortured by the Indian army.
The alleged abuse, residents say, is aimed at creating a climate of fear after India stripped the long-restive, blood-soaked Himalayan region of its autonomy on August 5.
Khan, 26, from Hirpora village in Shopian district, says he was dragged out and blindfolded along with his brother, who has learning difficulties, on August 14.
“They gave electric shocks to my brother right on the road outside. I heard him scream painfully,” Khan told AFP, showing marks on his arms, legs and buttocks.
Once inside the nearby Chowgam army camp, Khan said soldiers stripped him naked, tied up his legs and wrists, suspended him and beat him with rods.
The camp major, Khan said, accused him of inviting Riyaz Naikoo from Hizbul Mujahideen -- one of several militant groups fighting Indian rule -- to his recent marriage.
An uprising in Indian Kashmir -- backed New Delhi says by Pakistan which since 1947 has controlled the other part of the region -- has killed tens of thousands since 1989, mostly civilians.
“I kept repeating that was not true,” Khan said. “Then they gave me electric shocks again on my genitals and wounds. One of them said ‘I will make you impotent’.”
After being released at dawn and barely able to stand, Khan says he kept vomiting for 10 days and only managed to start moving around again after 20 days.
“I can’t eat properly anymore,” he said. “I don’t go into the room my wife sleeps in anymore... It’s better to die with a bullet than undergo such torture.”
New Delhi says its Kashmir lockdown since last month, with mobile service and the internet still snapped in most areas, is to prevent “terrorists” backed by Islamabad from stirring up trouble.
India’s national security advisor has denied that the military has committed any atrocities, a statement echoed by Colonel Rajesh Kalia, an army spokesman in Kashmir.
But people in Hirpora say they often hear screams from the army camp at night.
“The army is making examples of two or three young men from each village,” said one resident of Shopian.
The pattern is often of soldiers raiding homes, taking identity cards and mobiles and telling young men to report to the camps to retrieve them.
Sajjad Hyder Khan, a local official in Pinjoora village told AFP he has seen a list of 1,800 people detained by police and soldiers from Shopian alone, one of the four districts in the southern Kashmir Valley.
Not far from his home in Shopian town, five soldiers in black with “COMMANDO” on their sleeves and carrying assault rifles were going house to house, seeking details of residents.
“In my humble subdued voice, all I can say is that the pressure is there in order to prevent people from protesting,” said Khan, the Pinjoora official.
And it has worked. The official added: “There has been no stone pelting on the soldiers since August 5.”
UN chief likely to discuss Kashmir at UN
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is likely to use the opportunity of discussions during the high-level UN General Assembly session next week to raise the Kashmir issue, the UN chief’s spokesperson has said. Spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General Stephane Dujarric during the daily press briefing on Thursday said that the UN chief has underscored the need for dialogue as the only way to resolve the issue and, “as part of the solution for the current crisis in Kashmir, to make sure that human rights aspects are very much dealt with, as well.” “I think he will also use the opportunity of discussions during the General Assembly to raise it,” Dujarric said, responding to a question on Kashmir.
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