An international human rights group is urging India to allow an impartial investigation of hundreds of unmarked graves in occupied Kashmir after a government report confirmed they contain more than 2,000 bullet-riddled bodies, including hundreds of local residents.
Amnesty International said the investigation of graves in three regions also needs to be widened to all of the disputed Himalayan territory. "All unmarked grave sites must be secured and investigations carried out by impartial forensic experts," the London-based group said in a statement late on Monday.
The Jammu-Kashmir State Human Rights Commission said in a recent report that 2,156 unidentified bodies were found in graves in three northern mountainous regions, while 574 other bodies in the graves were identified as local residents. The commission's report is the first official acknowledgement that civilians killed in the two-decade conflict may have been buried in unmarked graves, but stops short of confirming that suspicion, long held by local residents and rights groups.
Previously, officials insisted that all the bodies were of outside militant fighters. The top elected official in occupied Kashmir has proposed a truth and reconciliation commission be set up to probe all killings since Kashmiri Mujahideen launched an armed campaign against Indian rule and New Delhi responded with a military crackdown in 1989. "The commission should be assigned the task to probe all the killings in the state. Whether the killings were carried out by militants or security forces, it needs to be probed," Omar Abdullah said.
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