Delhi rejects calls for the plebiscite, saying Kashmir is an integral part of India. Both Pakistan and the separatists say Kashmir is a disputed territory whose status must be determined by its people.
Amnesty today released an 82-page report — titled “A Lawless Law” — on detentions under the Public Safety Act in Kashmir, based on research by its team that visited the Valley in May last year and subsequent analysis of government and legal documents relating to 600 people who were detained over seven years up to 2010.
It is the first time that Amnesty has released its report in Srinagar.
“Pakistan continues to call for implementation of UN resolutions adopted in the late 1940s urging a plebiscite. India argues that the dispute over Kashmir should be settled bilaterally in accordance with the 1972 Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan. The failure of the Indian government to hold a plebiscite became a source of mounting discontent among Kashmiris,” the report says in its background section.
The report blames Delhi for arresting between 8,000 and 20,000 people, including children, under the act, which allows their detention without trial for up to two years. “By using the act to incarcerate suspects without adequate evidence, India has not only gravely violated their human rights but also failed in its duty to charge and try such individuals and to punish them if found guilty in a fair trial,” it reads.
Amnesty alleges that security forces maintain “monthly/quarterly targets” for detentions and refers to a meeting of the unified command in Srinagar on March 10, 2005, where two army generals “recommended setting of monthly targets for detaining the overground workers (of banned organisations)”.