Four Muslim Kashmiris have been missing in Indian capital city New Delhi.
The families of the missing youth told media men that they have not been able to contact their dear ones since Tuesday and have lodged missing reports in police stations of South Kashmir’s Shopian district.
The missing persons are identified as Yawar Ahmad Wani, Dawood Ahmad Thokar, Sayar Ahmad Shah and Arif Bilal Dar.
It is pertinent to mention here that this is the second such incident in last one week. Earlier, two sibling ferrying animals had gone missing from Kanpur city in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on November 18 and were later traced from a police station in New Delhi.
In Indian illegally occupied Kashmir, Indian troops while using enforced disappearance as a strategy to spread terror subjected thousands of Kashmiris to custodial disappearance during the last thirty years.
According to a report released by the Research Section of the Kashmir Media Service on the occasion of the International Day of Disappeared, today, being the most militarized zone in the world, Jammu and Kashmir has witnessed killings, enforced disappearances, torture cases, rapes and other brutalities by the Indian forces over the decades. Over 8,000 vanished only in the custody after they were picked up by the Indian troops, police and paramilitary forces since 1990. The report revealed that more than 200,000 relatives of victims of enforced disappearances have been working tirelessly to trace their missing ones. Also the families of those the disappeared people suffer economically because in most cases, the breadwinner of the family is targeted.
The report maintained that disappearances not only silence opponents but also create uncertainty and fear in the wider community. This inhuman, savage & insensate act has been committed by all the tributaries of so-called security apparatus comprising Army, Paramilitary forces, and special task forces as well as counterinsurgents working under the superintendence, control & direction of the security forces.
The cruel practice of enforced disappearances has given rise to a new class of people called half-widows and half orphans which are now common phrases used in Kashmir. The impunity provided to the troops and police personnel through draconian laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Disturbed Areas Act and Public Safety Act gave them the licence to kill and harass the people and ransack their possession without being questioned and the tragedy is that the burden of proof is shifted on the victims.
Meanwhile, Hurriyat leaders and human rights activists including Abdul Qadeer Dar, Muhammad Ahsan Untoo, Zamrooda Habib, Yasmeen Raja, Fareeda Behanji, Shabbir Ahmad Dar, Muhammad Iqbal Mir, Ghulam Nabi War and Khurram Pervez in their statements in Srinagar expressed solidarity with the families of enforced disappeared persons. They appealed to the world community to play its role in tracing the whereabouts of thousands of innocent Kashmiris subjected to custodial disappearance by Indian police and troops. They said that the world was observing International Day of the Disappeared but in the Kashmir families of the disappeared persons were waiting for their near and dear ones.
Rights activist Khurram Pervez in a tweet said, forgetting the disappeared will be complicity with criminals who want us to forget those who should never be forgotten. Remembering the disappeared is a tribute we must pay to our heroes,he added.
