Kashmiri Pandits living in exile stage protest, demand IDP status

Govt Ignored us, Kashmiri Pandits allege 

Protest on World Refugees Day


Ruchika Rai - The Times of India

New Delhi: On the occasion of World Refugees Day, members of Roots in Kashmir — a worldwide youth initiative of Kashmiri Pandits — came together at Jantar Mantar to protest against the indifference of the Indian government to their plight. It has been over two decades since the Kashmiri Pandits were forced to leave their land, following the atrocities of Islamist terrorists. However, both the government and political parties have ‘‘ignored our cause because we are scattered and less in number, thus not fit to be an important votebank,’’ said Rashneek Kher, founder member of Roots in Kashmir.

     The protesters demanded the status of Internally Displaced Persons. ‘‘This will get us international access and aid. The government has turned a blind eye to the exodus of over five lakh Kashmiri Pandits. At least international agencies should be allowed to look into the matter and save our identity. A committee should be constituted to probe into the matter and bring out the true story,’’ said Kher.

     The agitators also urged the media to take up the issue with more vigour. ‘‘The media is full of stories about refugees from all over the world. Only we are ignored. This is a case of ethnic cleansing and the attack on Kashmiri Pandits was indeed an attack on the presence of India in Kashmir,’’ said an angry Lalit Ambardar, who has been pursuing the cause for many years.

     Payal, a banker by profession, was there to support her husband. ‘‘I am a Rajasthani but I can relate to my husband’s struggle to go back to his homeland. Even as a parent I want to make sure that my children have a sense of belonging to Kashmir. After all, that’s where they belong.’’

     And the issue is not only about those who were ousted from the place of their birth. People who were educated enough were able to find jobs in the cities and are living a near-normal life, but almost 50,000 Kashmiri Pandits, who did not have the resources, are still living a miserable life in the valley. ‘‘There is just one toilet for every 100 persons and the death to birth ratio is as high as 14:3. We need an answer to all this,’’ said Kher. 

A Kashmiri Hindu or Pandit attends a rally to mark the "World Refugee Day" in New Delhi June 20, 2010. Two decades after they were forced to flee Kashmir, thousands of Hindu Pandits seek to return to their ancestral homeland, their hopes lifted by a fall in Islamist rebel attacks against New Delhi's rule.

Photograph by Reuters

Displaced Kashmiri Pandits seek special status

IANS

Over 150 Kashmiri Pandits, along with members of civil society, held a silent protest at the Jantar Mantar here Sunday and demanded that the government recognise them as internally displaced persons (IDPs).

The protesters, including children, students and professionals, were dressed in their traditional firhan attire and wore headbands. The children wore dresses with 'Born in exile' written on them.

'We wore white firhans which signified the death of this (Kashmiri Pandit) community and headbands on which was written 'Ignored'. This is how we feel, ignored and left out,' said Rashneek Kher, one of the organisers from Roots in Kashmir, a global youth initiative of Kashmiri Pandits.

The group demanded that they be recognised not as migrants but as IDP's citing the fact that they were forced to leave their homes and did not come to Delhi or other cities willingly.

'The IDP recognition will help us get international attention and our rehabilitation and relief work will then be taken care by the United Nation Human Rights Council (UNHRC) and not the government of India, which has not done much for us since the last 21 years of our forced exile,' added Kher.

'We want to be identified,' was written on many placards amongst others held by the protesters.

Amal Magazine, a protester, said that by terming them migrants, the Indian government was robbing them of their identity.

'We are refugees not migrants. Give us that identity. If the prime minister can ask the Sri Lankan government to give the Tamils in the island country IDP status, then why not us? We were thrown out of our own homes just because we called ourselves Indians,' Magazine told IANS.

'I am very worried about the new generation. Using guns to do the talking is not a part of our culture. The impression that the young get now is that our silent protests is of no use. When there is violence, people wake up. If the government doesn't pay attention to us, there may be serious repercussions,' said Veerji Wangoo, another protester.

There are around 100,000 Kashmiri Pandits in the Delhi and the National Capital Region (NCR).

'According to government figures, there were approximately 4.5 lakh who were displaced during the exodus in the early 1990s from the Valley. Some were not registered, so I asume there are more,' said Kher.

The protesters also demanded setting up of a commission to probe the exodus, its reasons and the exact number of 'refugees'.

Kashmiri pandits stage protest demanding IDP status

PTI
New Delhi, Jun 20 (PTI) Kashmiri Pandits today staged a demonstration here to demand status of Internally Displaced People (IDP) claiming that they were forced to flee the Kashmir Valley in 1990s in the aftermath of insurgency.
Clad in white firhans and sporting head bands, over 100 Kashmiri Pandits staged a protest march here against the"treatment meted out"to them by the Government."Today being the World Refugees Day, a lot of attention will be paid to plight of refugees in the country. Our main aim is to bring to public focus the circumstances Kashmiri Pandits live in today,"said Rashneek Kher, the founder member of Roots In Kashmir, a global youth initiative of Kashmiri Pandits living in exile, that spear-headed the protest march.

He said that among other things, his team sought to push the government to grant IDP status. Thousands of Kashmiri Pandits fled the Valley in the 1990s when insurgency was at its peak."In 1989, about 14,000 Pandits were in government job in the state and today their number is only 1500. These figures reflect the sad state of the community,"said Rashneek.

The protesters expressed their disappointment over the Government's"apathy"to their cause."We are still classified as migrants by the Government which is a gross violation of the UN Charter for Refugees,"alleged Amal Magazine, a Pandit residing in Faridabad.

"A migrant is someone who has willingly come out of a place but the truth is that we have been pushed out of the state. The administration should show a little more consideration,"he added.

Many of the protestors also pointed to"disparity in the differential treatment"by the Government to the refugees in the country."Sri Lankan Tamils were given refugee status within six months, while we are being ignored for the last two decades. It was the Government's duty to protect the Pandits in Kashmir. Since they failed to do that, the least they can do is grant us the refugee status,"said Sincad Kachroo, a member of Roots In Kashmir.

Plight of the Pandits; Silence of the Pundits by Chidanand Rajghatta(TOI)

The World Refugees Day is coming up again on June 20 and Lalit Koul is
making the rounds of Washington DC wonks and writers, lawmakers and
legislative aides, just as he did before World Human Rights Day on December
10 and the Kashmiri Pandits’ Exodus Day on January 19. In a city where every
cause has a proponent, every émigré and exile has an advocate, “we are
nobody’s children,” he complains. He can’t even rustle up a decent
demonstration on the Hill or in front of the White House. The best he can do
is drum up an occasional letter of support from a Congressman or schedule
the screening of a documentary to highlight his community’s plight. It has
an eloquent title: “...And the world remained silent.”

Some two decades after nearly half a million Kashmiri Pandits were
expelled from what were their homes for millennia, Koul and a small band of
his activist colleagues are fighting to keep world attention alive to their
cause. It’s hard; seemingly hopeless. In a city where Palestinians, Kurds,
Tibetans, Armenians, Burmese and dozens of other ethnic nationalities and
sub-nationalities are fighting for attention, the Pandit cause is just
another blip on the human rights radar. “We don’t have the backing of
Pakistan nor the funding of petrodollars,” says Koul, an info-tech
professional who heads the Indian-American Kashmir Forum, referring
obliquely to the support Kashmiri Muslims get from Islamabad and elsewhere,
“We are just falling through the cracks.”

Indeed, for the 1,500-strong Pandit community scattered across the
United States, it’s not so galling that they have no traction in America as
much as the neglect they say they suffer in India. When India itself is not
moved by half a million Pandits expelled from their homes and turns its back
on 50,000 lodged in refugee camps in the capital, why blame America — or
expats here, they say. It’s like Bhopal: when the people of

India, and their political and judicial representatives, sold them cheap,
why blame others? They rage against Indian civil society, which they say is
all a-bleeding about Kashmiri Muslims, but is unmoved by the plight of the
Pandits. And they note with more than a hint of bitterness that the
government of the day is pressing for rehabilitation of Tamil refugees in
Sri Lanka while concern for Pandits fades.

Their one hope is that like Palestine and Bhopal, the issue will
re-ignite somehow, catch world attention, and activists will pick up their
cause with renewed energy. The genocide of Kashmiri Pandits happened before
the internet age or instant 24/7 television. There were no TV cameras when
the judges and academics were murdered by Islamic militants with the stark
message — get out of Kashmir. There was no Facebook and Twitter and no viral
messaging.

Now technologies and techniques are available, but they lack benefactors
and big name support. The 1,500 Pandits in the US came mostly as students
and professionals, not as political refugees, and so lacked the voice and
the drama that asylum seekers bring. Most of them are too busy making a
career and home to spare time and bandwidth for their homeland.

In fact, some years back there was a poignant situation when a certain
Vikram Pandit became the top honcho of Citibank. Initial joy that finally
one of their own had risen to top of the corporate ladder and might be the
benefactor (in terms of face and voice if not with finance) they were
looking for was followed by dismay when they discovered that he was not from
Kashmir, but from Nagpur; “a Pandit by name, not by blood.”

Indeed, there is a sense of irony that even as the Pandit issue is
fading from the world’s conscience, the term Pandit is more in use than ever
before in the US — where it is spelt “Pundit”. If Koul and his fellow
activists could collect a dollar for every time the term was bandied about,
they would be lolling in lolly. TV talking heads and op-ed columnists are
now routinely referred to as Pundits, and there is a whole new media
subculture of Punditocracy, a term used to describe a group of powerful and
influential political commentators. From a book titled Sound and Fury: The
Making of Punditocracy to the website punditicracywatch.com, it is a much
overused term. Not a day passes without the tribe pontificating on issues
ranging from Obama and the BP oil spill to the Gores’ divorce to World Cup
soccer. Everything, except the plight of the people who gave them the word.
•
chidanand.rajgha...@timesgroup.com

June 20- World Refugee Day

It is ironical that when the Srilankan President came to India recently everyone right from the Prime Minister to the local Tamil politicians stressed on him to ensure rehabiliation of seventy odd thousand Tamil refugees who had to flee Jafna when Srilankan army annihilated the LTTE.Yet when it comes to its own refugess who are numerically much higher than those of Tamils and have been living as refugees now for more than two decades the same milk of human kindness seems to have dried completely.
We the original inhabitants of the Kashmir valley are now in the 21st year of our being refugees in our nation.Pity we dont even get the lip service that the Tamils of a different nation get from our Prime Minister and our politicians.
20th June marks the World Refugee Day and brings to focus the plight of refugees across the globe.On that day newspapers in our country would be full of heart rending stories of people who are refugees from Waziristan,Serbia,Iraq and even Albanians but alas there will be no mention of us.

The silence that marks our being refugees actually is an iconvenient truth that our politicians our media and our secular polity are unable to come to terms with hence they push it under the carpet.
Let us all on this day register our being refugees in our own land,the forgotten refugees,the inconvienent truth and the shame of our nation.

Roots in Kashmir requests you to be there at Jantar Mantar on 20th June,2010,Sunday at 4 PM.

Be there...let this nation know we exist.

-
Sinead Kachroo- 9717058747
Sanjay Peshin - 9910394999

PUNE PRESS COVERAGE

HYDERABAD

Here are the news reports from Delhi

Govt has no details of massacre /Wandhama Massacre
Friday, June 20,2008
NEW DELHI: Ten years have passed but the Union home ministry says it does not have any details on the Wandhama massacre in which 23 people were killed, reportedly by terrorists, in Jammu and Kashmir. The home ministry’s surprising reply came in response to an application under the Right to Information Act about the 1998 killings.The home ministry merely claims it was aware of the Wandhama massacre in the reply to Mr Aditya Raj Kaul, a Kashmiri activist based in Delhi. The ministry has not answered questions on details of the victims and the terrorists involved in the attack. The applicant had sought to know the names of those killed, their gender, age, and the time and day of the massacre. None of these were provided by the ministry. Asked about follow-up action by the local police after the massacre, the home ministry replied: "This information is not available with the Central government."It repeated the same answer when asked what prevented the local police from making further progress while remaining silent on whether the local police had closed the case.The ministry has replied "No" to a question on whether there was any move to hand over the case to the CBI or any other investigating agency. The ministry also said that the applicant should seek information about the massacre from the Jammu and Kashmir government, which is the right authority, but added that the Central act on Right to Information is not applicable to Jammu and Kashmir.The Wandhama massacre took place on the eve of Republic Day in 1998. The J&K media recently quoted the SHO of Wandhama as saying the case had been closed as the perpetrators of the massacre could not be traced.
ASIAN AGE

Hope for ousted Kashmiri pundits
Priyanka Sarkar New Delhi
Even after more than a decade, the scar of the Wandhama massacre is still afresh in the mind and soul of Kashmiri Hindus. On the occasion of World Refugee Day in Kashmir, a frontline group of the Kashmiri Pundits presented an audio-visual presentation and a panel discussion focusing on the Wandhama Massacre. The panel consisted of eminent personalities from all the spheres including members from the media, Human Rights and Former Director of ITBP.
The panel of guest speakers spoke about negligence done in such case and emphasised the need of making a link of communication with the victims. Media person, Asha Khosa, cited an incident while she was reporting for a national daily. "It was a barbaric scenario that one can cite ever," she said at the panel discussion organised by Roots in Kashmir on Friday evening.
"Life is miserable over there and people are so poor that they can't even move out of that place," she added. After so much of security and high alerts, the question still remains, "Will I ever be able to live my life without the fear of terrorists?" She recounted the horror which has failed to be erased from the minds of victims of the massacre. The panelists including former ITBP director general Gautam Kaul, journalists Tarun Vijay and Asha Khosa discussed on prevention of such attacks in future.
The massacre refers to the murder of Kashmiri Hindus in the town of Wandhama on the intervening night of January 25, 1998. It was one of the worst incidents carried out by militants in Kashmir. It was an illustration of the Kashmir militants policy of ethnic cleansing. The victims, included four children, nine women and ten men. Those who were killed were among the handful of Kashmiri Pundits who had chosen to stay back after the mass evacuation of half a million of their kin due to ethnic cleansing carried out by Pakistan sponsored terrorist in the Kashmir valley in 1989-90.
What however is truly tragic is the fact that the local police have closed the Wandhama Massacre case citing the reason that the killers are untraceable. Sub Divisional police officer Ganderbal Showkat Ahmad who was the then Station House Officer for the area reportedly said, "the case has been closed, as no one was identified as the killer of the Pundits." No one has been convicted for the massacre till date.
Tarun Vijay said that it is time to ponder into the reason as to why such massacres take place. "Instead of just having panel discussions, it is time we should come on board and discuss what needs to be done to prevent such incidents. What is the politics behind it and what are the political pressures. It is only through these efforts that we will be able to give them what they've lost," Vijay said.

PIONEER

Wandhama massacre remembered
NEW DELHI, JUN 20 (PTI)
Marking World Refugee Day, "Roots in Kashmir" a group of Kashmiri Pandits, today organised a panel discussion on the 1998 Wandhama massacre when 23 members of the community were killed by militants.
Panelists including former ITBP director general Gautam Kaul, journalists Tarun Vijay and Asha Khosa discussed on prevention of such attacks in future.
The Wandhama massacre took place on the intervening night of January 25. Twenty-three Pandits were killed by militants.
No one has been convicted for the massacre till date.
OUTLOOK

APPEAL

Conspicuous indifference on the part of the civil society in general towards the pan Islamism inspired separatists who are operating in Kashmir with the sole agenda of secession of Muslim majority valley from secular India, is only adding to the woes of Kashmiris. Vast majority of Muslims are suffering in silence for fear of ‘gun’ while the Pandits are in to the nineteenth year of their exile languishing as refugees in their own country. Much cherished Kashmiriyat today sees itself dumped in the debris of history what with a generation of segmented Kashmiri society growing in absolutely different geo- social environs across the Himalayan Pir Panjal ranges. Kashmiriyat, which had survived the repeated onslaughts during the medieval period today stand bruised almost beyond recognition.
No one appears to be listening.
Pandits were selectively targeted in the most inhuman manner leading to their mass exodus from the valley in 1990. Some of those few who stayed back fell victims to the Sangrampora; Wandhama; Nadimarg….. carnages. No, these were no riots. All individual as well as mass killings of Pandits were planned & executed with a motive – to cleanse the valley of Pandits . Not a single case of atrocity against Pandits has been investigated conclusively. It was a bizarre exhibition of pervert mind set when a few months ago a self confessed sharp shooter who had earlier admitted in a private television video magazine, to the killings of dozens of Pandits in cold blood in full view of the public in the streets of Srinagar on the orders of his local masters, was accorded a traditional public welcome by the separatists on his release from the prison. No charges were pressed against the terrorist & no eyebrows are raised.
The perpetrators & their over ground collaborators who should have been tried for crimes against humanity are free- many even masquerading now as Gandhians to appease the compulsive peaceniks.
Terrorism is not now confined to Kashmir alone- rest of India is increasingly & visibly coming under the terror cover. Therefore, it is all the more important to voice the concern against the menace. Political expediency can be no excuse for continued denial of justice to the Pandits. So what if they constitute just a miniscule minority that commands no electoral virtue.
Please speak up & support the initiative to stir up the conscience of the civil society.

(Lalit Ambardar)