Facts Under Ground: A fact-finding mission on nameless graves & mass graves in Uri area

Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP)

2008, Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP):

This report is in the nature of a survey of the graveyards in the frontier areas of Uri in Baramulla District, where special permission is to be sought from the District Magistrate and from the army headquarters for visiting such areas. This survey is an attempt to share our findings. For obvious reasons it was not possible for us to exhume the bodies or undertake any other scientific method of investigation. Nor was it possible for us to move around as freely as we would have preferred because the Indian security forces maintain a ubiquitous presence over our lives and movement. Nevertheless, despite these our survey provides accounts of villagers and their testimonies, which make a strong case for an independent international scientific investigation. We in APDP (Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons) are indebted to people who spoke to us knowing fully well that we neither offered them any protection for talking to us nor any guarantees that our demands would be met. This convinces us, yet again, that many a story of what befell our people at the hands of the Indian security forces remains to be told.

Resumen:

In 1991 people of Chandanwari (Baramulla) found 5 dead bodies lying on the river shore and took them for burial to the local graveyard. It was Friday; a person namely Ali Akbar Khan of the same village collected some donations in village for the burial. When he glanced at the dead bodies during the burial he found, to his horror, the body of his son Bashir Ahmad Khan, who had been picked up by the army a week before.

Since 1989 when mass resistance against Indian occupation in Kashmir erupted an estimated 10,000 persons have become victims of Enforced or Involuntary Disappearance (EID). According to the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) nearly two hundred thousand relatives of desaparecidos have been putting untiring efforts to ascertain the whereabouts of their missing ones. The state and the central Government claim that most of the persons have crossed over to Pakistan (i.e. ‘Azad’ Kashmir) to seek arms training. However the families of the missing as well as the APDP have contested the claim.

Successive state governments of J&K have been making contradictory statements regarding the number of missing persons in the state. (See- ANEXURE 1). In vast majority of cases of EID, people were detained during cordon and search operations locally called crackdowns. Some persons arrested were only male members of their families. The army, SOG and Government sponsored gunmen working with army have also been abducting people whose whereabouts remain unknown to this day. There are cases where non-combatant Kashmiris after detention have been killed in fake encounters at different places and then labeled as foreign militants. After the Chattisinghpora massacre, the Indian army killed five civilians passing them off as the ‘foreign militants’ responsible for the massacre of Sikhs. It was in 2005 that Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) came to know about the widespread phenomenon of graves-with-no-names or unidentified graves at different places in Uri area.

Thereafter 38 documented cases including that of Abdul Rehman Padroo emerged, which showed how noncombatant Kashmiris were taken into custody, killed, labeled as foreign militants and then buried in graves with no names. The unraveling of Padroo case in January 2007 forced thousands of people, including the families of disappeared persons, to take to streets and protest against the phenomenon of EID. This lends weight to the stories circulating for years that unidentified graves may after all contain remains of thousands of missing civilians of Kashmir. (See - ANEXURE 2)

We met people claimed to have seen dead bodies being thrown into River Jehlum. In many cases police were informed about it but to no avail. Some of the dead bodies resurfaced when they got stuck on the river shore and were retrieved by the people who buried them in their village graveyards in order to avoid the desecration of dead bodies. We also met witnesses who have seen the army, with the help of police, burying the dead in different graveyards.

We decided to investigate this matter. A team of APDP visited the areas and conducted a survey of some of the places that contain nameless and mass graves. These places are: Zandifaran, Budmulla, Fatehgarh, Kichama, Gondabal Peerniyan, Chehal Bimyar, Boniyar, Trikanjan, Banali, Parro- Gagarhill, Chottali, NHPC Road, Brigade Head quarters Rampore, Gingal, Bijhama, Lachipora, Dashewara, Mayan, Charkote, Hatlonga LoC.

Most of these graveyards, according to the local community, were constituted by the inhabitants of these villages on the orders of Jammu and Kashmir Police. The total number of such graves according to our survey in three Tehsils of the frontier district Baramulla of J&K comes to 940 or nearly 1000. The Armed forces and Jammu Kashmir police claims that the slain persons buried in such cemeteries were unidentified foreign militants killed in the border areas while infiltrating across the line of control. Whereas many locals claimed that most of the persons buried in such graves are local Kashmiris.

Tabla de contenido:

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

LIST OF SOME OF THE PLACES WITH NAMELESS GRAVES & MASS GRAVES

FIRST PHASE
ZANDFARAN (ZumZumPora), BUDMULLA & FATEHGARH
KICHAMA, SHEERI

SECOND PHASE
PEERNIYAN GONDABAL
CHEHAL BIMYAR

THIRD PHASE
NHPC ROAD BONIYAR
BONIYAR, POLICE STATION
TRIKANJAN
BANALI
PARRO-GAGARHILL
CHOTTALI
BRIGADE HEADQUARTERS, RAMPORE
GINGAL

FOURTH PHASE
BIJHAMA
LACHIPORA
DASHEWARA
MAYAN
GHARKOTE
HATLONGA URI

GLOBAL PRACTICE ON THE ISSUE OF NAMELESS GRAVES & MASS GRAVES
The International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP)

CONCLUSION AND DEMANDS

Fuente(s):

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