The Panun Kashmir (PK), an organisation of Kashmiri Pandits displaced from the Valley, urged the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) to organise a special session on the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits to provide them an opportunity to create awareness about the human rights violations against them.

PK president Ashwani Chrungoo released a memorandum that has been dispatched to Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the United Nations, and Michelle Bachelet, High Commissioner of UNHRC, in which the organisation has regretted that no action has so far been taken on the earlier memorandum that was submitted on 27 September.

The memorandum pointed out that the members of the community of Kashmiri Pandits had been living as refugees in their own country for the last 29 years. The memorandum said, “This community has been the victim of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Kashmir. Mass exodus was inflicted upon the members of the community in 1989-90 by the Pakistan sponsored and guided terrorists. The theocratic and extremist goals of the fundamentalist and terrorist organizations of the Kashmir valley shunted seven hundred thousand of Kashmiri Pandits into exile.

Their men were killed, women raped and brutally murdered, hundreds of their places of worship were destroyed while thousands of their houses were gutted in fire by the fundamentalist and secessionist forces in the valley of Kashmir. The rabid communal campaign against the indigenous people, the Kashmiri Pandits, is, unfortunately, unabated till date.”

“It has been observed since long that you (as well as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the UN Human Rights Council) have been fed with a one sided story of the Kashmir situation, therefore, we feel it is important to present before you our side of the picture as well,” said Chrungoo.

“The National Human Rights Commission of India adjudged that ‘the Commission is constrained to observe that acts akin to genocide have occurred in respect of the Kashmiri Pandits and in the minds and utterances of some of the militants and terrorists a ‘genocide type design’ may exist against the Pandits’.

The crimes committed against the Kashmiri Pandits are, by any yardstick, deserving of the strongest condemnation”, the memorandum said, adding it was important to mention that the terror groups inspired by Islamic religious extremism also made non-Muslims, particularly the minority Hindus, targets in the hilly areas of Jammu region and conducted a large number of organized massacres there.

“Pakistan’s open sponsorship and support to the three-decade-old terrorism and mayhem in the state of Jammu and Kashmir has brought destruction and ruin to the unfortunate victims of terrorism. Their brazen interference has strangulated the life of minorities in Kashmir,” the memorandum said.

It urged the UN and the UNHRC to take a correct position regarding the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir and working with the Government of India create conditions so that the perpetrators of crimes against Kashmiri Hindus supported by Pakistan wind up their terror infrastructure forthwith.