Charity Begins At Home!

Niloofar Qureshi

Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), which is fighting for safeguarding human rights of Kashmiris in Indian administered Kashmir, aims through its work to engage with issues of importance on a civil society level, monitor and investigate human right abuses, and seek the truth, justice, and reparations. And though it has been at the forefront by raising a number of serious human rights violation related issues like enforced disappearances and unmarked graves, it too seems to have reservations in taking up cases of killings by ‘unknown gunmen’. Some defend the JKCCS inaction on such cases by saying that it is futile to lodge complaints against human right violations when the identity of assailants is unknown. However, this argument doesn’t have any logic since those committing human rights violations take utmost precautions to conceal their identity and as such most of these cases have to be filed against those who are circumstantially the most likely perpetrators.

However, the failure of JKCCS to even take up cases of human rights violation for which militants have accepted responsibility has raised very serious questions within the human rights fraternity regarding its impartiality. For example, in August Hizbul Mujahideen accepted that it had kidnapped several relatives of policemen in response to the arrest of some of their relatives by the police. Though the kidnapped persons were subsequently released unharmed, this act cannot be condoned on the grounds that it was a ‘tit-for-tat’ action because abduction and forcible confinement are a very serious violation of the human rights. In all fairness, the JKCCS should have at least condemned these strong-arm tactics but it chose not to do so.

The JRL and JKCCS need to realise that since human rights are equally applicable to all, any display of subjectivity while taking up incidents of human rights violations only ends up destroying the concerned organisation’s own credibility. Defending human rights is a moral and societal responsibility and the international community doesn’t appreciate it’s manipulation in an attempt to use it as a tool for furthering political agendas.

This is also the reason as to why the appeals of JRL and JKCCS for international intervention to end human rights violations in Kashmir being committed by the state to evoke no response. Thus, while the JRL may keep organising protests against human rights violations that are being committed in Kashmir by government forces, no one is likely to pay any heed until and unless it addresses the issue of human rights more objectively without any bias. Similarly, as long as the JKCCS continues to brush incidents of human rights violations committed by militants under the carpet, its efforts to bring the perpetrators to book are unlikely to yield any worthwhile results. And there is nothing to feel bad about because as the old saying goes, charity begins at home!”

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