The time will definitely come, for the entire world, when graves will open and the dead will speak. For Kashmir, perhaps the most unfortunate state in Indian Union, the moment, it appears, has arrived.
The Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah was forced to concede that a ‘truth and reconciliation commission’ would be set up to unearth the facts regarding the allegations, especially those related to presence of mass graves in the state.
Amnesty International has also taken up the issue of discovery of unmarked graves containing more than 2000 bullet-ridden bodies. This investigative report by State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) came to public notice in August 2011.
Now further reports indicate that in south western part of J&K more unmarked graves have been discovered. These graves allegedly contain another 3844 unidentified bodies in remote areas near Line of Control between India and Pakistan. Amnesty has called for a prompt, thorough, independent and impartial investigation into the allegations.
The most unfortunate state has gone through the great ordeal of estrangement, marginalisation, sycophancy, fights and frictions, then insurgency and counter insurgency. The net sufferers have been the innocents, a considerable portion among them women and children.
Bowing to growing internal and international pressure, the J&K government has announced that it is ready to begin DNA profiling of missing persons to determine the identities of those buried in the state’s unmarked graves.
Let us hope that this assurance is fulfilled in letter and spirit and it does not remain an eyewash or tiff between the rival political parties. The international bodies and the whole world are watching how serious we are about the grave human rights violations in our country. On the floor of J&K assembly, legislators gave heartrending accounts of abduction and subsequent killings of their near and dear ones. One ruling National Conference legislator went to the extent of claiming that he was witness to how his own neighbours and friends had disappeared. He alleged that in “91,000 feet deep gorge in his border constituency Kupwara how crows ate corpses”.
One only wishes that the days of dance of death and destruction in J&K are over forever, serious efforts of reconstruction are taken up, aspirations of people are fulfilled and reconciliation takes root. The real reconciliation is not possible unless truth comes out. Peace is not possible unless justice is done. Let us pray for a peaceful future for this much wronged, much troubled state and its hapless inhabitants who have lost their limbs, lives and peace of mind besides their culture and their way of life.