The Round Table

The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs

ISSN: 0035-8533 (Print) 1474-029X (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctrt20

Pakistan and human rights in Kashmir

Anam Zakaria

To cite this article: Anam Zakaria (2020): Pakistan and human rights in Kashmir, The Round
Table, DOI: 10.1080/00358533.2020.1741890

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2020.1741890

Published online: 18 Mar 2020.

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THE ROUND TABLE
https://doi.org/10.1080/00358533.2020.1741890

OPINION

Pakistan and human rights in Kashmir

Anam Zakaria*
Freelance writer

In 2018, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)
released an unprecedented report on human rights violations in Kashmir. A significant focus
of the report was on the human rights abuses in Indian-administered Kashmir, where
allegations of torture, sexual violence, excessive use of force and disappearances have long
been rampant. However, the report also highlighted serious violations on the Pakistani side.
While emphasising that the violations in the two regions controlled by Pakistan – namely
Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit Baltistan – are of a different magnitude and more
structural in nature, OHCHR made a number of recommendations for both India and
Pakistan. In 2019 the UN body noted that neither country had taken any concrete steps to
improve the human rights situation in either part of Kashmir.
As soon as the report was released, India responded with an outright rejection,
criticising OHCHR among other things for ignoring cross-border terrorism.
Meanwhile, Pakistan welcomed the proposal to set up an inquiry commission to inves-
tigate the violations by the Indian state, but remained mute on the recommendations
directed towards itself. In many ways the reactions to the report by both countries
encapsulated the historic India-Pakistan position over Kashmir. Over the past 72 years,
both nation-states have pointed fingers towards the other. India accuses Pakistan of
terrorism and Pakistan argues that this stance deflects attention from the human rights
abuses on the Indian side, turning the world’s attention away from Indian atrocities. For
Kashmiris, this has meant that their genuine grievances are too often ignored amid the
tit-for-tat sloganeering and blame game.
Between 2014 and 2017, I travelled along the Line of Control (LoC) in AJK to under-
stand the ramifications of the conflict on people living on the Pakistani side. As the UN
report underscored, limited information is available on this part of Kashmir, not least
because of limits on freedom of expression, opinion, peaceful assembly and association.
Literature which challenges the Pakistani narrative on Kashmir is often prohibited. In 2016,
sixteen books written by pro-independence writers were banned by the AJK government.
This is one way that dissent is curbed in the region. The result is that most Pakistanis, and
those outside Pakistan, have little insight into the state of affairs in the region.
My research reinforced the key issues highlighted by OHCHR. Several Kashmiris
I interviewed spoke of constitutional and legal structures that impinge on human rights
and criticised restrictions on freedom of speech. Specifically, nationalists in the region, who

CONTACT anamzakaria@gmail.com
*Author of 1971: A people’s history from Bangladesh, Pakistan and India; and Between the Great Divide: A journey into
Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
© 2020 The Round Table Ltd
2 A. ZAKARIA

wish for an independent Kashmir which belongs to neither India nor Pakistan, registered
their frustration at not being able to contest elections or register a party which represents
their views. This is because a provision in the 1974 AJK Interim Constitution Act prevents
any person or political party from engaging in any activity which is detrimental to the
ideology of the state’s accession to Pakistan. Others spoke of the heavy presence of military
and intelligence forces in the region, surveillance activity and the marking of anyone with
nationalist sympathies. Women and children living by the LoC, who face the brunt of
ceasefire violations when men move to cities for jobs, also spoke of their demands for
bunkers going unheard even when cross-LoC firing has remained frequent and results in
a high number of casualties annually. In Gilgit-Baltistan, the misuse of anti-terrorism laws
to implicate activists also remains an ongoing issue.
While an equivalency cannot and should not be drawn to the use of force by the Indian
state in Kashmir and the growing suppression of voices since 5 August 2019 – when
Kashmir’s special status was revoked in the Indian Constitution – these ‘structural’
challenges on the Pakistani side have serious repercussions for the rights and freedom
of Kashmiris. They are also detrimental to Pakistan’s official policy on Kashmir. By
harping on the UN’s role to mediate the Kashmir conflict on the one hand and refusing to
follow UN recommendations on the other, Pakistan weakens its own case.
Moreover, while Pakistan has often insisted that Kashmir is not a bilateral issue and
that third-party engagement, particularly of international actors, is necessary, it too has,
by disempowering the Kashmiris it represents, pushed aside the very people who matter
from the equation. Instead of letting journalists, activists, politicians and other key
stakeholders from Pakistan-administered Kashmir – regardless of their political associa-
tion – lead the discourse on the larger J&K conflict, the Pakistani state continues to
exercise hegemony over the Kashmiri people. Instead, by building bunkers and securing
the safety of the residents it administers, transferring power from Islamabad to
Muzaffarabad, encouraging freedom of expression and following the UN recommenda-
tions, Pakistan will only strengthen its case. It must remember that it is the population of
Pakistan-administered Kashmir that is a critical stakeholder in the conflict and it is their
rights and privileges that Pakistan has repeatedly promised to secure. Deflecting attention
from them is not only harmful to its international stance but also a stain on its Kashmir
policy in the very region it administers.