By EuAsiaNews,
Brussels : India’s ambassador to Brussels, Mr. Dipak Chatterjee, said Thursday that the “Indian government is aware that an urgent resolution on missing persons in Jammu and Kashmir has been adopted in the European Parliament by 54 MEPs who were present out of 785 MEPs.”
“This resolution though by a miniscule number of MEPs will no doubt receive the consideration it deserves from the government of India,” he told EuAsiaNews.
The ambassador’s comments came after the Subcommittee on Human Rights in the European Parliament (EP) held a hearing here Wednesday evening on the issue only a week after the EP passed a resolution calling for an urgent inquiry into claims that mass graves have been discovered in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.
The two main guests speakers at the hearing were Dr.Angana Chatterji, co-convener of the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-Administered Kashmir, and Mrs Marjan Lucas, from IKV Pax Christi which claims to be the largest peace movement in the Netherlands.
Another member of the Tribunal, Parvez Imroz, spoke via a video-link from Kashmir but due to a technical problem his voice could not be heard hence his message was distributed in print.
Ms Chatterji who said she was a citizen of India and resident of the US also showed a video clip on her recent visit to what she claimed were sites of the hundreds of mass graves of unknown persons found in Indian Kashmir.
She alleged that she was followed and harassed by Indian security and intelligence personnel during her visit to Kashmir in June and that her 68-year-old-mother who lives in Kolkata is also being harassed. She also received “300 hate emails from Hindu nationalists “.
Referring to the EP resolution, Ms Chatterji said Europe has taken the matter seriously and India should also take it seriously as the “issue will not go away.”
Ms Lucas said the EP resolution is “very welcome and very important” but it does not change realities on the ground.
“The international solidarity and you as the European Parliament give makes the work of Parvez acknowledged,” said Lucas calling for the issue to be addressed at the next EU-India summit to take place in France on 29 September.
On his part, Parvez in his statement claimed that “we physically verified existence of more than 900 such nameless graves” and said he expectd from the EP that “our concerns and the general situation in which people of Kashmir find themselves in would be addressed in a just and institutional manner.”
Mrs Rense Teerink, deputy head of the Indian desk at the European Commission, said the European Union is following the matter closely.
“We have noted that the Indian authorities have been silent,” she said adding that the current French EU Presidency has contacted the resident Commissioner of Indian-administered Kashmir in New Delhi and expressed the EU’s concerns over the situation.
Observers here point out that the issue of “mass graves” recalls horror images in the minds of ordinary Europeans in relation to the Nazi and Stalinist eras in the past and most recently in Bosnia-Herzegovina and in Iraq.
Several Members of the European Union (MEPs) also expressed their views during the hearing.
Neena Gill, chair of the EP’s Delegation for India, in her comments said the Indian government has carried out investigations into the allegations of mass grave and even dismissed 200 soldiers for human rights abuse.
The Indian media have also reported on the issue , she noted.
Baroness Emma Nicholson, author of the European Parliament’s Kashmir report adopted in May 2007, said it was very difficult “for us in the EU to track back and look at other people’s unidentified victims of insurgencies.”
She also said the term “genocide” must be used with great caution describing it as an error of judgment, in response to Chatterji’s reference of “genocidal violence” in Kashmir.
Charles Tannock, head of the Friends of India Group in the EP, suggested that the imminent holding of elections in Kashmir had to do with the raising of the mass grave issue at this juncture.
Baroness Sarah Ludford and Elizabeth Lynne, both MEPS from the UK , said the issue had nothing to do with being anti-Indian or pro-Pakistan or vice-versa but it had to do with human rights.
The EP would have also called for an inquiry if the mass graves were found in “Azad Kashmir”, they said.
Helene Flautre , chairwoman of the subcommittee on human rights which is a subcommittee of the EP’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, said the Indian embassy was invited to participate in the debate but nobody came.
On their part, pro-Pakistani Kashmiri activists are claiming victory.
“It was very important after the discovery of the mass graves to have the European Union involvement so we generated enough support to have a resolution,” Barrister Majid Trambo, head of the Brussels-based Kashmir Centre, told EuAsiaNews.
“So it was important to be followed by a hearing. It is a continuous process that we want to see how truth and justice prevails in the Indian-occupied Kashmir. We will take this issue to other international forums such as the UN,” said Trambo who is considered to be the most active lobbyist on the Kashmir issue in Europe.
“India is under pressure. Their non-presence here today clearly shows this,” added Trambo with a smile.
However, other Kashmiri activists cast doubt on the authencity of the reports on the mass graves.
Sardar Shaukat Ali Kashmiri, Secretary General of the International Kashmir Alliance, said in Muslim societies anyone who dies is buried in graveyards.
Those who are rich Muslims they put gravestones and signs on their graves but the poor ones leave it unmarked, he explained.
“This report and video that they have shown of unknown graves does not prove in any way that they are unknown as they have gravestones on them. It is all part of a propaganda supported by the Pakistani establishment,” Shaukat Ali told EuAsiaNews.
“The situation in Kashmir is improving day by day,” he claimed.
Abdul Hamid Khan , chairman of the Balawaristan National Front, said if there was no freedom in Jammu and Kashmir how could Ms. Chatterji and others go the region and make a film and show it here.
“These reports are all lies”, he alleged.
Khan said if the Indian army wanted they could have easily hidden the mass graves .
Analysts, however, opine that Indian diplomacy has recently suffered a setback in the EP.
They point out to the EP resolution and the hearing on the mass graves, another EP resolution adopted in February 2007 critical of the human rights situation of the Dalits in India and last June representatives of the Dalit community in India as well as defenders of Dalit human rights in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Europe urged the European Union (EU) to support the cause of the Dalits in fighting discrimination.
Analysts also question the wisdom behind the Indian position of boycotting such hearings in the EP which in the end proves detrimental to India’s image itself.