‘UN human rights experts can only have limited impact on Kashmir’

By Arul Louis

United Nations, Oct 26 (SocialNews.XYZ) Human rights experts at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) are concerned about the Kashmir situation but can have only a limited impact, according to Special Rapporteur Agnes Callamard.

"The situation in Kashmir is a big concern for many of us within Special Procedures. But it is also a situation where we need to recognise that besides keeping the issue on the agenda, and besides denouncing the violation I am not sure that we at this point can be asked to have much more impact than that," she said on Friday while replying a question at a news conference here.

"It doesn't meant that we are giving up at all but it does mean that there are a number of actors that are probably better placed than Special Procedures to move the issue to a better situation," she added.

Special Procedures of the OHCHR is the official name for its group of independent human rights experts with mandates over specific topics or areas.

Callamard is the rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions.

She said that during past month or so she communicated with Indian authorities about "killings but also violation of access to information, violation of freedom of expression and so on and so on".

Responding to a reporter's question about Kashmir she said: "I am just not sure that at the moment we have the strategic place for an impact on Kashmir. So what we got to do is to keep doing, to keep the issue on the agenda, make sure that we are continuing monitoring the situation, responding to the victims, trying to at least mediate somehow what is being the human cost of the situation."

Callamard said that she had written to the Indian government giving specific details about victims and their perpetrators, but the quality of responses she received has been "poor" and "further gotten poor after the decision of the Indian government to transform the status of Kashmir".

Asked about the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA), she said: "I am aware of that, of the legal framework that allows detention without charges and so on and so forth... This has been on our agenda, this has been denounced."

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)

Source: IANS