ISLAMABAD: Indian security forces are committing state terrorism in India -held Kashmir that jeopardises peace in the entire region, Federal Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Mazari said on Tuesday.

India has continuously violated UN resolutions in Indian-occupied Kashmir, she said at an international seminar on Hindutva Polices and State of Minorities in India.

The full-day programme was organised by the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS).

The human rights minister said the international community should raise their voice against human rights violations in India-held Kashmir.

“The extremist ideology of Hindutva has found a new face and [strength] under the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership, revealing the state’s true face and unravelling its claim of secularism in the process. In India, lower caste Hindus and minorities including Sikhs, Muslims and Christians are being discriminated against and treated as inferior citizens,” she said.

Dr Mazari also criticised the UN’s role in the Kashmir issue, maintaining that while UN resolutions for East Timor were identical to the ones on Kashmir, the latter were being neglected in execution merely for being Muslim.

She said the plight of Muslims in India-held Kashmir is a particularly major concern for Pakistan as the Kashmiri struggle for independence is repressed and given the colour of religious extremism when in reality it is about the right to self-determination.

“Even as per the UN resolutions, Indian-occupied Kashmir is an occupied state and from the ongoing suppression to the attempts of changing the region’s demographics, everything that is being done in the region should be seen as war crimes,” the minister maintained.

“We need to reiterate that India is committing war crimes in India-occupied Kashmir,” she said and that Indian forces use rape as a weapon of war.

Participants were told that the internal situation in India is also deteriorating with every day and that minorities are not safe there either.

Speakers said the world has turned a blind eye yet to human rights abuses in Kashmir which reflects hypocrisy on part of countries that talk about human rights and democracy.

They asked why the world is silent when the violations are being highlighted by international organisations and there is evidence for it.

IPS Executive President Khalid Rahman said the need for studying Hindutva has increased manifold under the present Indian regime.

A book titled Hindutva: Rising Extremism in India and documenting speeches and papers on the same topic was launched during the event.

Published in Dawn, February 20th, 2019