When it comes to Kashmir, Human Rights Watch has trapped itself in reporting human rights violations through an Indian statist lens, and is thus unable to see the proverbial forest for the trees Opinion | cjwerleman
“We are moving towards a human rights apocalypse in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir,” Mr. Masood Khan, President of Pakistan-Administered Kashmir, told me when wetwelve months ago about the Indian government’s move to introduce new domicile rules that allow Hindus from all over India to buy property and seek employment opportunities in the disputed territory.
The undeniable reality is this: On August 5, 2019, the Indian Government unilaterally stripped Kashmir of its special or autonomous status, and then nine months later passed so-called Domicile Rules, which remove protections that had been put in place to protect the ethnic, linguistic and religious identities of the Kashmiri people.
“The number of successful applicants for domicile certificates that appear to be from outside Jammu and Kashmir raises concerns that demographic change on a linguistic, religious and ethnic basis is already underway,” said UN human rights experts. Taken together, these unlawful and anti-democratic measures constitute textbook ethnic cleansing and represent an undeniable threat to the security and wellbeing of eight million Muslims in Kashmir, but you wouldn’t know this if your main source for information on the disputed territory is the globally recognised and respected Human Rights Watch.
The problem therein is this: if Human Rights Watch views Jammu and Kashmir to be an integral part of India, then it’s made itself blind to the ethnic cleansing taking place there, because it views all Indian citizens as having equal rights to employment and property. When I asked why the organisation won’t afford Kashmir the same or similar type of status it affords to the Palestinian Territories, which it views as separate from the state of Israel, she said, “We are not making our own determinations about who qualifies a state, just following the UN on human rights and International Criminal Law treaties.”
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