‘An Islamist State Of Kashmir Is No Citadel Of Human Rights’: Kashmiri Hindu Sunanda Vashisht Tells US Panel

Recalling the horrors and brutality suffered by Kashmiri Hindus in 1990, Columnist Sunanda Vashisht on Thursday (14 November) told a US Congressional panel on human rights that abrogation of Article 370 by India was “a restoration of human rights”, reports India Today.

"I am a member of the minority Hindu community from the Kashmir valley in India, victim of the worst ethnic cleansing witnessed in independent India," Vashisht said.

"I speak here today because I survived,” she said at the hearing organised by the Tom Lantos HR Commission in Washington.

Others weren't so lucky, she said, and proceeded to describe in heart-rending detail the fate that had befallen them.

One of them was a young man, an engineer named BK Ganjoo, who she said hid in a rice container in his attic when terrorists came for him.

"The terrorists left but as they were leaving his hiding location was disclosed by the neighbours. The terrorists came back and shot him in the container and forced his wife to eat the blood-soaked rice of her husband," Sunanda Vashisht said.

“We have seen ISIS-level of horror and brutality in Kashmir 30 years before the west was even introduced to the brutality of radical Islamic terror,” She said.

“An Islamist State of Kashmir where other religions are not welcome & tolerance of any other viewpoint is absent is no citadel of Human Rights. Terrorism is the ultimate opponent of Human Rights. Human Rights cannot & should not take precedence over Human Life,” Vashisht said.

“Abrogation of Article 370, that has raised so much concern around the world, is in fact a restoration of human rights,” she asserted.

"Today I am delighted that Kashmiris have the same rights as the Indian citizens. If something as serious as a woman’s right to own property and granting of LGBTQ rights, amongst many others, has been accomplished through abrogation of article 370, then it is safe to assume that restoration of Internet and phone service in few remaining districts of Kashmir is not too far away," she said.

"I am a proud daughter of Kashmir," she added. "Terrorism has uprooted me and snatched my home from me. I hope my human rights are restored too someday."