A human rights group — International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights in Indian-administered-Kashmir (IPTK) — has claimed that the “spectre of death and state violence” haunts Kashmiri civil society each day. “Violence is anticipated, experienced, and intimate to lives. There are those that are its direct targets and others that are concomitantly affected. Violence permeates daily life, regulates bodies and conditions behaviour,” it said here on Sunday.
Referring to the killing of three local youth in the April 30 staged gunfight near the Line of Control, the IPTK said that the Army “executed” Shehzad Ahmad, Riyaz Ahmad, and Mohammad Shafi, claiming them to be “infiltrating militants” from Pakistan and demanded a transparent probe by a neutral group of agency into this and other such incidents.
“Extrajudicial actions of the Army in Indian-administered Kashmir have been accompanied by discourses in April-May 2010, presenting insurgency, militancy, and terrorism as escalated threats to national borders, charting collaborations between external and internal enemies (Muslims of Pakistan and Muslims of Indian-administered Kashmir), arguing for greater state control over “freedom,” the group alleged.