Save Yasin Malik: Letter to the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights

His Excellency Dr Volker Türk United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
Palais des Nations
CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

Date 22 June 2023

Dear High Commissioner,

Re: Save Yasin Malik: Indian PM Modi seeks death penalty for the pro peace Kashmiri leader.

Excellency I take this opportunity to make a fervent appeal and seek your urgent intervention to save Mr Muhammed Yasin Malik's life as India’s BJP Modi Government seeks death penalty for the pro peace Kashmiri leader. Mr Malik was given a double life sentence in a politically motivated trial on 25 May 2022 by a security court of India’s National Security Agency (NIA) with false charges on terror funding.

The NIA was specifically tasked to orchestrate these charges against the most prominent opponent of Modi Government’s oppression in Kashmir (also called Jammu and Kashmir-J&K).  On 29 May 2023 the appeal of the NIA to convert Mr Malik's life sentence to death was heard by the Delhi High Court, which ordered Mr Malik to respond by 9 August 2023.

 Excellency millions of   Kashmiris across the ceasefire line CfL in Kashmir and in the diaspora, are deeply shocked and seriously aggrieved at Mr Modi’s decision to seek their leader’s death sentence.

The decision is seen by the Kashmiris as a deviously cruel ploy by the Modi Government, to eliminate their defenceless political opponent for electoral gains in the 2024 Indian general election. It is vitally important therefore, that the Indian Prime Minister is firmly told to withdraw the appeal for death penalty, and strongly dissuaded from committing a grave injustice against the pro peace Kashmiri leader.

Mr Malik is the most prominent and revered Kashmir leader. As such he is an indispensable part of a political solution on the status of his internationally disputed homeland. People of Kashmir therefore, expect that the OHCHR will call out India’s Modi Government for its spiteful, malicious and politically motivated vindictive persecution and prosecution of Mr Malik. And for acting with total impunity in Kashmir, the political status which, is yet to be determined under UN auspices through a democratic and transparent plebiscite.

Instead of engaging in dialogue with Mr Malik and the Kashmiri leadership on the Kashmir issue, Modi Government annexed the internationally disputed region on 5 August 2019, and began arrests and prosecution of Kashmiri leaders under laws which OHCHR reports of June 2018 and July 2019, quite rightly describe as India’s “lawless laws.”

Excellency Mr Modi’s Government is extremely intolerant of political dissent in Kashmir. Even   human rights defenders like Khurram Parvez, as well as many Kashmiri journalists, are held under laws such as the Public Safety Act PSA and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act UAPA, the laws that are inconsistent with international law.  These lawless laws especially UAPA, allow the authorities to declare individuals as terrorists without producing incriminating evidence against them.

Mr Malik is the Chairman of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front-JKLF, a political movement committed for a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue. He was arrested on 19 February 2019 under the notorious and draconian PSA in Srinagar. He is imprisoned at the Tihar Jail in Delhi in solitary confinement. Mr Malik, and other Kashmiri leaders including Mr Shabir Shah, Ms Aasiya Andrabi, Ms Nahida Nasreen, and Masarat Alam are all part of the solution in the Kashmir issue. The UN has a responsibility to ensure that their right to free speech and freedom of movement is guaranteed and protected under UN Charter and UN resolutions on the Kashmir issue/dispute. India is duty bound to ensure as a trustee and proxy of the UN in Kashmir, to ensure that the fundamental rights, including the inalienable and the inherent right to self-determination, and the territorial integrity of Jammu and Kashmir State, is not subverted or vitiated.

Excellency Mr Malik renounced armed resistance in 1994 and embarked on a peaceful movement for the resolution of the Kashmir issue. He met many Indian leaders including Prime Ministers Dr Manmohan Singh, Mr IK Gujral, and the highly respected Mr Atul Bihari Vajpayee, politicians including ministers, senior officials and civil society figures who supported his decision for a peaceful political movement to achieve Kashmiris’ fundamental sovereign rights. He was assured of “genuine political space,” and   undertakings were given to him by Indian leadership that the Kashmir issue will be resolved through meaningful dialogue with the relevant parties.

The respected first BJP Prime Minister of India late Atul Bihari Vajpayee, promised the Kashmiris "the sky is the limit."  Mr Modi his successor, has completely reneged on the Vajpayee principles, and has adopted an ‘all-out muscular Kashmir policy’ in which there is no space for dialogue on the Kashmir issue!

Excellency under Mr Modi’s doctrine, Kashmiris and their leadership has a stark choice, either accept Modi’s Kashmir policy, meaning status quo, or face India’s fury and wrath. Consequently Mr Malik’s prosecution is politically motivated as Modi doctrine does not recognise fundamental, inherent and inalienable right of the Kashmiri people to self-determination, even though the UNSC resolutions call on India, and also Pakistan, to respect the will of the people in Kashmir through a UN supervised Plebiscite

To further his cause Mr Malik visited the US and Britain where he met with officials, political figures, members of the civil society, and human rights organisations. British and the US officials, the Indian Home Ministry’s Minister of State late Rajesh Pilot, senior officials, prominent civil society members, ex diplomats, judges and academics, supported and encouraged Mr Malik in his peaceful resistance with which, he has kept firm faith. Mr Modi however, has completely reneged on the commitments for political space and dialogue. India’s current National Security Adviser, Mr Ajit Doval had also acted as a go between during negotiations with the Indian authorities and Mr Malik.

Not being content with his oppressive policies in Kashmir the Modi Government annexed the disputed State on 5 August 2019 and bifurcated it into two Union Territories to be ruled directly from Delhi. By annexing and breaking up Kashmir into union territories, Mr Modi’s Government completely disregarded India’s solemn commitments at the UN and bilateral agreements, both with Pakistan, and the Srinagar based Government of Indian administered Kashmir.

Excellency, it is important to remember that Kashmir’s provisional and conditional constitutional relationship with India, was based on defined spheres of responsibilities, linked specifically with the 26 October 1947 conditional agreement, which was underpinned by the subsequent article 370 of the Indian constitution. As a consequence of unilateral abrogation by India of article 370 on 5 August 2019, the constitutional bridge between India and Kashmir no longer exists. Therefore, India rules Kashmir today as a colonial occupier with the enormous presence of over 900,000 troops backed up by a plethora of oppressive and draconian laws, two of these lawless laws, PSA and UAPA, are mentioned above.

Mr Malik is a frail 57 year old dignified, God fearing, brave and proud man with integrity. He has many medical ailments and health issues. He has been shut away, and has no idea about the outside situation. His only contact is with his ailing elderly mother who is assisted by his sister in Kashmir. He has not seen his Pakistani wife since his only child, a ten year old daughter, was a toddler.

In protest he went on hunger strike twice at the manner in which India’s politicised judiciary conducted, and continues to conduct his trials. He has not been heard by the Indian judicial system.

Instead Mr Malik has been prosecuted over the past four years under false and fabricated cases. Despite undertakings given and kept by all, except by the Modi Government, thirty year old militancy related cases were re-opened as part of the politically motivated vendetta against the pro peace leader.

Excellency, Mr Malik is an admirer of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. India’s Modi led BJP Government however, derives its ideological inspiration not from Gandhi but from the RSS, which is the antithesis of the Gandhian political and religious philosophy, and the world view of India. Mr Modi believes in the total, political, social and cultural conquest of Kashmir, and an unquestioned submission of Kashmiri peoples’ will. Mr Malik however, is not prepared to surrender and capitulate his peoples’ free will to Mr Modi's, political, judicial, communal, and militarised aggression.

Mr Modi’s ultra-(religious) nationalist BJP is in an election mode to enthuse its majoritarian electoral base. Through India’s pliant media, the BJP vilifies and portrays Mr Malik as Kashmir’s Osama Bin Laden to justify his judicial murder. Mr Malik however, wants to see Kashmir as a bridge of peace, amity and prosperity in South Asia rather than a perpetual bone of contention.

To Kashmiris the OHCHR as the apex human rights institution of the UN, is morally and legally well placed, to avert the vindictively malicious judicial oppression, and the intended murder of a man, who is genuinely committed to Kashmir’s peaceful political transition, and quite clearly therefore, he is the voice of peace in Kashmir.

By seeking the death penalty to eliminate a Kashmiri political opponent, Mr Modi portrays himself as the region’s hegemon against a defenceless man of peace, who has the right and the truth on his side.

Excellency as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights you are well placed to exercise the moral and legal powers vested in you by the world conscience. I urge your Excellency to uphold international legality and morality, to save the life of the pro peace Kashmiri leader Mr Muhammad Yasin Malik.

Yours

Sincerely

Zafar Khan-

Head of Diplomatic Bureau Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front

International Secretariat 119-123 Cannon Street Rd London E1 2LX

Email: jklfdiplomaticbureau@gmail.com

Copied:  Maria Arena MEP head of European Parliament’s Committee on Human Rights

Johana Cherry KC MP Chair Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights

Amnesty International. Human Rights Watch.  Reprieve