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

Date 10 December 2023

Dear High Commissioner,

Re: Urgent intervention is urged, to save Kashmiri leader Yasin Malik’s life.

Excellency on the 75 anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights- UDHR, your urgent intervention is needed to save pro peace Kashmiri leader Mr Muhammed Yasin Malik's life from a death sentence being sought against him by the Indian Government, while a double life sentence was served on him in a politically motivated ‘terror funding’ case on 25 May 2022.

 Excellency millions of Kashmiris across the ceasefire line CfL in Kashmir and in the diaspora are deeply shocked at the decision by the Indian Government to seek death penalty for their leader.  

This decision is a cruel ploy by India’s BJP leadership to eliminate its political opponent through an unfair trial. You are strongly urged to dissuade India’s BJP Government from committing a grave injustice against the pro peace Kashmiri leader.

Mr Malik is a revered and most charismatic political leader, and an indispensable part of a political solution on the status of the internationally disputed Jammu Kashmir - generally referred to as Kashmir. Kashmiris expect that the OHCHR will call out such a spiteful, malicious and politically motivated vindictive prosecution of Mr Malik by the Mr Modi’s BJP Government in India.

 Excellency, instead of engaging in dialogue with Mr Malik and the Kashmiri leadership for a just and democratic resolution of the issue, Mr Modi’s Government annexed and bifurcated the internationally disputed Jammu Kashmir on 5 August 2019, and  arrested  Kashmiri leaders under laws which OHCHR reports of June 2018 and July 2019, quite rightly described as India’s “lawless laws.”

The BJP Government is extremely intolerant of political dissent in Kashmir. Even human rights defenders like Khurram Parvez, as well as numerous Kashmiri journalists, are held under laws such as the Public Safety Act, PSA and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, UAPA, 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-which is committed to a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue. He was arrested on 19 February 2019 under the notorious and draconian PSA in Srinagar. At present he is held at India’s notorious Tihar Jail in solitary confinement. He and other Kashmiri leaders including Mr Shabir Shah, Ms Aasiya Andrabi, Ms Nahida Nasreen, and Mr 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 over twenty UN resolutions regarding the political status of Kashmir. India is duty bound therefore, to ensure the fundamental rights, including the inalienable and the inherent right to self-determination, and the territorial integrity of Jammu and Kashmir State, which India has subverted and vitiated in contravention of her international commitments on the question of Kashmir’s status.

 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 movement to achieve Kashmiris’ fundamental sovereign rights through a political settlement.

He was assured of “genuine political space,” by the Indian leadership that the Kashmir issue would be resolved through meaningful dialogue. India’s first BJP Prime Minister the late respected Atul Bihari Vajpayee, promised the Kashmiris "the sky is the limit." On the other hand his successor Mr Modi 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 have 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 Kashmiris, 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, former 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. In the 1990s India’s current National Security Adviser, Mr Ajit Doval had also acted as a go between in negotiations with Indian authorities and Mr Malik.

 Not being content with his oppressive policies in Kashmir the Modi Government annexed the disputed State Jammu Kashmir on 5 August 2019 and bifurcated it into two Union Territories to be ruled directly from Delhi. By annexing and breaking up JK 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 the Indian Supreme Court is expected to give a long awaited decision on 11 December 2023 regarding petitions before it on the dismantling of JK by the Modi Government on 5 august 2019. While Kashmiris await with abated breath about the SC decision, it remains to be seen what a Supreme Court of a neo- colonial India decides on the restoration of the semi-autonomous status of internationally disputed Jammu Kashmir whose status is yet to be determined through a UN supervised plebiscite by its 22 million people.

 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. On 5 August 2019, Mr Modi’s Government also took away hard fought fundamental historic citizenship rights of Kashmiris with abrogation of article 35A.  This has opened the floodgates into Kashmir of 1.4 billion Indians; which is manifestly designed to turn the people of Jammu Kashmir into a minority in their own homeland.

 Excellency, Mr Malik is a frail 58 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 12 year old daughter, was a toddler. In protest Mr Malik went on hunger strike twice at the manner in which his politically motivated prosecution and trials are being conducted in the Indian courts. In other words he is not being heard by the Indian judicial system. Instead, Mr Malik has been prosecuted over the past five 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 BJP Modi led Government however, derives its ideological inspiration not from the anti-colonial and pro peace 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 people and his free will to Mr Modi's, political, judicial, communal, and militarised aggression.

 Excellency, Prime Minister 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 ominously looming 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 between India and Pakistan. 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 judicial murder of a man, who is committed to Kashmir’s peaceful political transition.  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.

Therefore, on the seventy fifth anniversary of the formation of the UDHR your Excellency is kindly reminded of the solemn obligation to uphold the principles of international legality, justice and morality vested in you as the head of the UN’s Human Rights Commission to intervene, and save the life of the pro peace Kashmiri leader, Mr Muhammad Yasin Malik.

Yours
Sincerely,

Zafar Khan-
Head of JKLF’s Diplomatic Bureau.
Email: jklfdiplomaticbureau@gmail.com