(Courtesy: Pakistan Link) WASHINGTON: The Indo-American Kashmir Forum, representing the Kashmir refugees and other victims in Jammu and Kashmir, on February 5.condemned the State Department’s latest annual human rights report as “biased,” holding Islamic militants in Kashmir to a higher level of esteem than the militants have received in the US and elsewhere, and ignoring the sufferings of the Kashmiri pandits.

It is also severely critical of the State Department for its failure to mention in the report the role of Pakistan and other Islamic nations in encouraging mayhem in Kashmir.”

The “one-sided report of the state department, the forum said, “will only encourage secessionist religious zealots and prolong the misery of the Kashmir people.

The forum is also peeved at the glaring absence of any mention of the indigenous people of Kashmir, pandits, who have fallen prey to cruel and brutal treatment at the hands of Islamic fundamentalist.

The forum, which is based in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, and whose aim is to promote human rights of religious minorities of Kashmir, said in a statement that the State Department has maintained its policy of biased and subjective reporting in the 1995 human rights report. Instead of even-handed reporting and full disclosure of human rights abuses perpetrated by all parties involved, the report mainly highlights lapses by the government and marginally glosses over the crimes committed by criminals and militants.

“Nowhere is this inadequacy more apparent than in reporting of events in Kashmir where Islamic militants caught up in the global resurgence of their religious fervor, are battling the state under the guise of freedom fighters, forum said.

While tic report time and again mentions extrajudicial lapses, it fails to mention terrorism evoked through

jihad” in Kashmir, a seditious activity that is the basis for judicial prosecution in the (New York) world trade center bombings.

It also castigated the State Department report for yet another glaring shortcoming of lack of mention of the nexus between the political parties demanding secession in Kashmir and outfits engaged in human rights abuses there.

According to the forum most constituents of the Hurriyat Conference also operate “terrorist organizations as a in matter of strategy.

Article extracted from this publication >> February 10, 1995