Intent is to Win Hearts Sincerely

Last month, General Hasnain, told media persons on the sidelines of a public gathering in Shopian district of south Kashmir that the Army was ready to extend all cooperation to the police and the civil administration to  trace the people who had gone missing in the last two decades of turmoil. He  also asked people to register complaints in police stations to put the record straight.

The association of parents of disappeared persons (APDP) Monday said that only an international- independent investigation would be acceptable to the family members of the disappeared. It alleged that in the last 20 years Indian state had refused to grant sanctions for prosecution of Army personnel under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). So far not even in one case sanction under AFSPA has been granted. If army somehow wants to cooperate in investigations, they should begin granting sanctions under AFSPA and stop hiding behind the legal immunity.

Team SAI investigated the allegations and discovered that this was a feeble ploy to discredit the “Heart is my Weapon” theory being followed in Kashmir by all instruments of the state.

The offer made by General Hasnain was never one for Total Solutions. It was an honest attempt to reach out and tell people that the army could help. Disappearances are of different types. People in Kashmir think that these are linked to only  killings by the Army. It was this record that the Army wanted to set straight through interaction with the agencies looking at the entire issue, including APDP.

In 1989-90, many people anticipated the coming of Azaadi, just as they have many times thereafter. A number of young people walked across the Line of Control to meet divided families or participate in training to take on the Indian Army. A large number were killed in remote areas while trying to make a re-entry. In the Nineties, with militancy at its height, infiltrators and exfiltrators killed in large numbers were never identified. They were buried in graveyards reserved for unidentified people. Some of these exist in the Jhelum Valley near Buniyar and a controversy regarding this was in the news in 2008. The fact is that people who took up arms against the State and were killed in remote areas could not be registered with their actual identity and their bodies could not be returned to their families. There were many others who fled the Valley and worked in Jammu; some got killed on the Jammu or Poonch border/LC.

The blame, as is usual, came against the Army for doing all kinds of unethical things. The point remains, if you fight  the State you fight the Army of the State and if you get killed and can’t be identified your body will be handed over to the local police who have a system and a budget for unidentified bodies. The bodies may not have been even  photographed by the Police. No one is to be blamed really. Those were extraordinary times and   now with increasing return to normalcy it is difficult for people to imagine what went on, then.

All that Gen Hasnain was trying to do was offer to make a beginning. It will be a monumental task and he stated that right there. There are hardly any statistics maintained and virtually no documents. What it can be is a mission akin to what the British and the Germans set up to locate missing persons. This is a mission which every country sets up after it has been through internal or external turbulence. It does not open up the Army towards being blameworthy for HR violations.

In fact, it is exactly the opposite. Only an Army believing in Human Rights will offer assistance to locate and identify missing persons. When the intent is to win hearts sincerely there will be detractors to the cause and they will have to be taken in the stride.

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