Protest against ‘biased’ reporting on human rights in Kashmir

Protest against ‘biased’ reporting on human rights in Kashmir

NEW DELHI: A demonstration was organised by “Roots in Kashmir” here in the Capital on Sunday to protest against Amnesty International on the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The group accused Amnesty International of being biased in their human rights reports in the last two decades on the issue of Kashmir and its aboriginal people -- the Kashmiri Pandits.

“The organisation has failed to rise to the occasion when it could have played a greater role in raising issues connected with the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits,” said a group member in a statement released to the press.

Criticising Amnesty International for its stance on the Kashmir issue and plight of the Kashmiri Pandit community, Roots in Kashmir demanded reconstruction and renovation of desecrated and destroyed shrines and better rehabilitation for those refugees still languishing in camps. The group also asked Amnesty International to send its representatives to Kashmiri Pandit camps in Jammu and conduct an on ground survey and report on the present situation. They urged the organisation to extend the same privileges to Kashmiri Pandits as they do to other Internally Displaced People across the globe.

According to Roots in Kashmir, to escape persecution more than 500,000 Kashmiri Pandits had to leave their homes back in the Valley and over 50,000 refugees were still languishing in uninhabitable refugee camps in Jammu and Delhi.

“The blind attitude towards the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Pandit community speaks volumes of the discrimination against the Kashmiris,” said another group member of Roots in Kashmir.