United Nations Human Rights Special Procedure has appealed to the G-20-member states and other global communities to stay away from the meetings of the forum planned by the Narendra Modi-led Indian government in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
The Special Rapporteur of UN Human Rights issued a statement Monday describing the massive rights violations as including torture, extrajudicial killings, and denial of political rights of Kashmiri.
"Human rights violations have risen dramatically in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir since 2019 when India revoked the special status of the region", warned a UN Independent Expert, one week before a scheduled G-20 meeting is scheduled to be held in Srinagar.
"By holding a G-20 meeting of the working group on tourism on 22-24 May", warned Fernand de Varennes, UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues, " India is seeking to normalize what some have described as a military occupation by using a G-20 meeting and portray an international 'seal of approval", despite what Volker Tiirk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, told the U.N. Human Rights Council a few weeks ago was a worrying human rights situation in the Kashmir region."
"The situation there has — if anything — become much worse since myself and fellow UN independent experts transmitted a communication to the government of India in 2021.
We then expressed our grave concerns that the loss of political autonomy and the implementation of the new Domicile Rules and other legislation could alter the demographic composition of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir, may result in political disenfranchisement, and significantly reduce the degree of political participation and representation of the Kashmiri and other minorities previously exercised in the former state, undermining their linguistic, cultural and religious rights", he said.
"On all counts this seems to be occurring on the ground, in a repressive and sometimes brutal environment of suppression of even basic rights".
The Independent Expert noted that there have been reports of significant numbers of Hindus from outside the region moving into the region so that dramatic demographic changes are underway in Jammu and Kashmir to overwhelm native Kashmiris in their own land".