[Reader-list] Kashmiri Pandits demand ‘internally displaced persons’ status

[Aditya Raj Kaul]

Kashmiri Pandits demand 'internally displaced persons' status By Indo-Asian
News Service <http://www.freshnews.in/author/indo-asian-news-service/> on
Friday, October 31, 2008

 Kashmiri Pandits held a silent sit in protest outside the United Nations
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office here Friday, demanding that
the community, which fled the Kashmir
Valley<http://www.freshnews.in/tag/kashmir-valley>during the peak of
militancy 20 years ago, be declared as internally
displaced persons (IDPs).

The community represented by Kashmiri youth organisations in the capital
like Roots in Kashmir, Internally Displaced Youth Front, All India Kashmir
Samaj, Panun Kashmir and others, along with elderly members of the community
in Delhi, presented a five-page memorandum of their demands to Nayona Bose
of the UNHCR to be forwarded to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who is on
a two-day visit to India.

"We welcome the UN secretary on his visit to India. As a community we,
therefore, appeal to him to help us - declare the Kashmiri Hindu community
as IDPs," Lalit Ambardar, 35, a qualified engineer who was one of the
100-odd protestors, told IANS.

"The Human Rights Working Group on Minorities in Geneva had recognised
Kashmiri Hindus formally as a 'reverse minority'. So the use of the
insulting term of 'migrants' for us - a forcibly exiled community - should
be removed from all records and communications relating to us henceforth,"
Ambardar chorused the protestor's demand.

Many others protestors were angry about the state to which Kashmiri Hindus
have been reduced since insurgency in the Kashmir Valley in 1989-90, when
more that 400,000 Kashmiri Pandits fled their homes to escape persecution.

"Historically, Kashmiri Pandits were known to be intellectuals, but now we
are rotting away - we are a national waste - we have no political
representation, have no geographic ethnicity that we can claim as our own!"
fumed Raj Raina, 37.

Raina was unable to get a government job owing to his 'migrant' status. He
is now self-employed and runs a small printing press.

"When I was forced to leave my home in the Valley,
militants<http://www.freshnews.in/tag/militants>threatened us time and
again - merge with us (with political and religious
views), perish or vanish," Raina recapitulated memories of the insurgency.

Amongst those present from the community were varsity
students<http://www.freshnews.in/tag/students>,
who also held that the current situation was sordid.

"Calling us migrants implies that we had a choice in the matter, when we
were actually forced to flee," said Aditya Raj Kaul, a 22-year-old student
activist from Delhi University.

"We have demanded in the memorandum that the UN direct the Indian government
to ensure adequate protection to the residual Kashmiri Hindu population
living in the Valley. Also that Kashmiri Hindus be restored political and
economic rights, giving them equal status rather than second-class
citizenship in their native land," Kaul informed.

Link -
http://www.freshnews.in/kashmiri-pandits-demand-internally-displaced-persons-status-93431