SRINAGAR: Amnesty International India welcomes the pledge of the new central government to ensure the security of all citizens in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) in the wake of Defense Minister Arun Jaitleys visit to the state. In particular, the organization welcomes the recent overtures made to rehabilitate families of an estimated 150000 to 200000 Kashmiri Pandits who were forced to leave the state between 1990 and 1994 due to threats and intimidation from armed groups. At the outbreak of insurgency in the early 1990s, several prominent Kashmiri Pandit community leaders were killed and others intimidated by armed groups.
Ifthe government wants them to come back, then they have to take into confidence the local politicians, all the civil society actors, both separatist and mainstream. That is the only way [violence between the communities] will not happen again, Tickoo said.
A J&K police report in 2011 stated that 209 Kashmiri Pandits had been killed in J&K since 1989, but that charges had been established in just 24 cases. Amnesty International urges the state government to ensure that religious minorities in the state are able to exercise all their constitutionally guaranteed rights, and that impartial and independent investigations are conducted into the killings at Nadimarg, and all other allegations of unlawful killings, with a view to bringing to justice those responsible.
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