Army Chief of Staff General Bipin Rawat on Wednesday rejected the first-ever report by the United Nations on the alleged human rights violations in Kashmir. He called it “motivated”, and said the human rights record of the Indian Army was well known to all.
“I don’t need to speak about the human rights record of the Indian Army,” Rawat told reporters on the sidelines of an event in New Delhi. “It is well known to all of you, it is well known to the people of Kashmir, and to the international community. I don’t think we should get too concerned about the report, some of these reports are motivated.”
In the report, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said that the conflict in Kashmir has robbed millions of people of their basic human rights, and continues to inflict untold suffering upon them. Noting the continuing tensions, Al Hussein called on Indian security forces to exercise restraint and abide by international standards governing the use of force when dealing with future protests.
Rawat’s stance is is the same as the Ministry of External Affairs’. The MEA had said the report violated India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. It also described the report as “fallacious, tendentious and motivated”.
Last week, India urged the United Nations to reject the report. “It should be a matter of deep concern for the council that this report undermines the UN-led consensus on terrorism and in fact, legitimises terrorism by referring to the UN designated terrorist entities as “armed groups” and calling terrorists “leaders”,” Rajiv K Chander, the permanent representative of India in UN, had said.
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