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| 31 August 2004 | Tuesday | 14 Rajab 1425 |
Amnesty urges probe into Kashmir abuses
SRINAGAR, Aug 30: Amnesty International urged India on Monday to be more serious about probing alleged human rights violations in occupied Kashmir, where three more people died in the latest violence.
The London-based human rights watchdog urged both state and Indian authorities to probe alleged violations "exhaustively".
"Despite the government's own acknowledgement that 3,184 people 'disappeared' in occupied Jammu and Kashmir between 1990 and November 2002, very few security force personnel have been prosecuted for the illegal killing of people who have 'disappeared'," said Catherine Baber, Amnesty's acting director for Asia.
"And only a small handful of those crimes have been the subject of official investigation," she wrote in a letter to the Kashmir-based Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons.
The association believes some 8,000 to 10,000 people have disappeared in occupied Kashmir, mostly after arrest by Indian troops, since the insurgency against Indian rule erupted in 1989.
Several dozen of its members led a silent protest on Monday carrying banners that denounced disappearances. The state government counters that many missing people may have gone to the Azad Kashmir for arms training as rebels or died on the way there.
In continuing violence, troops on Monday shot dead two Mujahideen in a battle in the northern district of Baramulla which borders Azad Kashmir, a police spokesman said.
A soldier who was injured in an overnight gunbattle in southern Rajouri district died in hospital on Monday, the spokesman said. Four Mujahideen were killed in that clash.
Three soldiers also died when their welding machine blew up overnight in the village of Akchinmal near Kargil, 190 kilometres northeast of Srinagar, an army officer said. -AFP
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