As the team of envoys, also including US ambassador to India Kenneth I Juster, visited the world’s largest migrant Kashmiri pandit camp at Jagti on the outskirts of Jammu city as part of their two-day, stock-taking tour of J&K, the community members welcomed them holding placards that read “Free Kashmir from Islamic terrorism”.
A delegation of displaced Kashmiri pandits representing over seven lakh-strong population of their community “living like refugees in their own homeland” also submitted to the envoys’ team a memorandum, making a slew of pleas.
The pleas included “one-place settlement” in the Valley for over seven lakh displaced community members and setting up of a special crime tribunal to probe into “the genocide and ethnic cleansing committed against the Hindu-Sikh minorities of Kashmir”.
“All those Hindus-Sikhs of Kashmir who were forced to leave the Valley in the past 70 years due to religious persecution, division of Jammu and Kashmir state in 1947 and terrorism need to be resettled in Kashmir as the primary stakeholder of the Valley of Kashmir. In this connection, the planning should be initiated forthwith,” said Kashmiri pandits in their memorandum, submitted to the envoys’ team on their behalf by community leader Ashwani Chrungoo.
It said all such seven lakh people should be resettled at one place in the Valley keeping in view their geo-political and fundamental aspirations in Kashmir.
“The land where lay the ashes of our forefathers and the temples of our gods is invariably the Kashmir Valley — the gifted land which Rishi Kashyap, our earliest forefather, inhabited for us thousands of years ago,” Chrungoo told envoys.
The community members also demanded establishment of a special crime tribunal.
“A Special Crimes Tribunal be established to enquire into the excesses, genocide and ethnic cleansing committed against the Hindu-Sikh minorities of Kashmir in view of the pronouncement made by the National Human Rights Commission in 1999 in this regard,” it said.
The memorandum said in order to secure the political rights of the Hindu-Sikh communities in the Valley, the delimitation process need to reserve five seats in the Assembly of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir for these victim minorities.
A Bill envisaging preservation, protection, promotion and management of Hindu temples and shrines in Kashmir be adopted as an ordinance by the UT of Jammu and Kashmir in the immediate future, it said.
Referring to a 2008 Special Prime Minister’s package, in which the Centre had envisaged a special recruitment drive for the youths of displaced community from Kashmir, the memorandum said this drive has already benefited thousands of displaced youths over the last ten years.
The memorandum, however, demanded more recruitment against the vacancies under this drive at the earliest.
The memorandum pointed out that the displaced Kashmiri Pandits would on January 19, 2020, complete “three tragic and painful decades of their seventh mass exodus from the Kashmir Valley, their abode for the last thousands of years, he told them.
During their interaction with Kashmiri pandits, the envoys posed several queries to the community members about their property and future.
Envoys are visiting J&K to see first-hand the efforts made by the government to normalise the situation after the revocation of the erstwhile state’s special status in August last year.
The group of foreign envoys included those from the United States, South Korea, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Maldives, Morocco, Fiji, Norway, Philippines, Argentina, Peru, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, and Guyana.
This is the second time that a foreign delegation is visiting Jammu and Kashmir since August 5, when the region was split into two Union territories. Last year, a delegation of European Union MPs had visited the region to assess the situation.
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