Life in gunsmoke valley--Article from hindustantimes by Soumitro Das a Kolkata-based writer)
There is a national consensus on Kashmir that consists of three propositions: One, the insurgency is wholly a creation of Pakistan; two, there is no such thing as Kashmiri nationalism; three, the army can do no wrong. It is the third proposition that we will devote our attention to since it is the key to understanding the first two.
The army in J&K is immune to any moral interference from outside. There is no romance here. There is evidence of ???encounters??? for which medals can be won and credit taken. All this is possible because of a legal grid that consists of the Jammu and Kashmir Disturbed Areas Act, the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special Powers Act (AFSPA) and the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act. All these laws contain a common provision: ???No prosecution, suit or other legal proceedings shall be instituted except with the previous sanction of the Central Government against any person in respect of anything done or purported to be done in exercise of powers conferred by this act.???
These laws violate the UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. According to Amnesty International, the J&K government had made at least 200 requests for prosecution since the beginning of the insurgency. All were refused. The letter of refusal is of a standard format and contains the same phraseology for every case. Former J&K Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad had said that 122 army personnel had been prosecuted and convicted. But no details were given of the misdemeanours for which conviction was secured. This leads to the suspicion that they might have involved things other than human rights violations.









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