BELLOW, India (AP) – On a recent cold winter day in Kashmir controlled by India, Mushtaq Ahmed dug the earth and dug a grave for his teenage son with difficulty. However, there was no body to lower inside.
Surprised, a group of spectators watched in silence. But Ahmed kept digging, now knee-deep inside the half-dug grave.
Then he got up, straightened his back and looked angrily at the crowd.
“I want my son’s body,” he cried. “I ask India to return the body of my son to me.”
Police said government forces fatally shot Ahmed’s 16-year-old son, Athar Mushtaq, and two other young men when the men refused to surrender on the outskirts of Srinagar city on December 30. opposed to the Indian government.
The men’s families maintain that they were not militants and were killed in cold blood. There was no way to confirm either of the two claims independently.
“It was a false encounter,” cried a grieving Ahmed, as the crowd gathered around him in the cemetery in the southern town of Bellow shouted slogans demanding justice.
Authorities buried them in a remote cemetery 115 kilometers from their ancestral villages.
Under a policy launched in 2020, Indian authorities have buried numerous Kashmiri rebels in unmarked graves, denying their families the proper burials. The policy contributed to the widespread anger against India in the disputed region.
India has long relied on military force to retain control of the portion of Kashmir he controls. It has waged two wars over the region with Pakistan, which also claims the mountainous area. An armed uprising since 1989 against Indian rule and the subsequent oppression of India has killed tens of thousands of civilians, rebels and government forces.
In August 2019, India revoked the semi-autonomous status of Kashmir, curtailed the curfew and the interruption of communication and arrested thousands, causing an outrage and economic downfall. Since then, authorities have enacted a series of laws and implemented policies that local residents and critics see as part of India’s colonial colonial project in the volatile region.
Kashmiris have for years accused Indian troops of targeting civilians and abuses of power with great impunity. Troops are accused of waging shootings and then saying the victims were militant to claim rewards and promotions.
Athar’s killing comes months after a rare acknowledgment of misconduct by the Indian army, which admitted that soldiers exceeded their legal powers in the deaths of three local men who initially described it as Pakistani terrorists. Police concluded that an Indian army officer and two civilian “army sources” killed the three workers “after stripping them of their identity and branding them hardcore terrorists.” The officer was charged with murder.
Kashmiris’ fears and anger over such incidents were exacerbated by the new policy of not identifying the murdered or their accomplices and refusing to return their bodies to their families.
According to authorities, the policy is aimed at stopping the spread of the coronavirus, but rights activists and residents say it is an attempt by the government to avoid large funerals that incite more resentment against India.
Police Inspector General Vijay Kumar said in a recent interview with The Hindu newspaper that the policy “not only stopped the spread of COVID infections but also stopped the glare of terrorists and possible avoided legal and order problems. “
Authorities, however, did not stop the state-sponsored funerals for government forces killed in the fighting with the rebels.
“Not giving back the bodies of the slain is a humiliation for humanity,” said Zareef Ahmed Zareef, a civil rights activist and prominent Kashmir poet.
Distressed families of militants and civilians killed by government forces have repeatedly demanded that Indian authorities, predominantly Hindu, allow final rituals and funerals in ancestral villages under the Muslim faith. The pleas are repeatedly denied. Families sometimes visited the remote cemeteries discreetly, marking the graves of their families with stones and scribbling their names with paintbrushes.
Until last April, Indian forces handed over the bodies of rebels to their relatives for burial. Since then, according to police, 158 militants have been buried in isolated places.
Athar’s body was the last one denied to family members last year. On December 30, when Ahmed received the news of the murder of his son, he rushed to a police facility in Srinagar where Athar’s body was detained. When police later transported the body with that of the two other men to a remote mountain for burial, Ahmed followed.
Along the way, he was stopped several times, but he begged Indian forces to show him one last time from his son’s face, he said. When he finally reached the cemetery, he was crushed.
Ahmed said the graves were dug by a land manufacturer, contrary to the traditional practice in which they are dug with graves and usually marked with marble tombstones.
“They were not graves, but hurriedly dug pits,” he said. “I lowered my son into the pit myself.”
Experts and rights activists say the refusal to return bodies to families is a crime.
“This is a complete violation of international law and against the Geneva Conventions,” said Parvez Imroz, a leading human rights lawyer. “It even violates local laws.”
Athar’s murder and remote burial have lamented the public, while thousands of people are demanding on social media to return the bodies.
In his simple home in Bellow, mourners surrounded Athar’s sad mother. His sister cried, ‘Mother, be patient. He will return. He promised me he would. ‘
At the cemetery, the tomb that Ahmed had dug for his son remained empty.
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Saaliq and Hussain reported from New Delhi.