[Reader-list] Surely, Kashmiri Pandits must oppose this judgement?

[Aditya Raj Baul]

I am surprised why Kashmiri Pandits are not opposing Justice Gita
Mittal's judgement (see PTI report below) as the judgement reads:
"Forcing the petitioners to return to the area
> where they were persecuted violates the principles of International Law
> forbidding the expulsion of a refuse into an area where such person might be
> again subjected to persecution,""

Surely, it must be anti-national, nay seditious, to invoke
International Law regarding any aspect of Kashmir, as according to the
Kashmiri Pandits the Kashmir issue is India's internal matter and not
an international dispute.

Or do you want to have your cake and eat it too?

ARB


> *HC asks Centre not to evict KPs*
>
> *NEW DELHI, Nov 30: *The Delhi High Court today restrained the Centre from
> evicting Kashmiri Pandits, who fled the Valley following outbreak of
> militancy, from Government quarters here after their retirement and directed
> it to provide them alternative residence in the capital.
>
> Justice Gita Mittal said that right to shelter is a fundamental right and
> the displaced members of the community cannot be forced to evict as in the
> present situation they cannot go back to the Valley because of Government’s
> failure to ensure their safety there.
>
> The High Court pulled up the Government for threatening to forcibly evict
> the Kashmiri Pandits and directed it to pay a cost of Rs 25,000 to each of
> the petitioners.
>
> The court passed the order on a bunch of petitions filed by 24 Central
> Government employees, all Kashmiri Pandits who were working in Kashmir
> Valley but were transferred to the capital as the community was targeted by
> militants from 1989.
>
> The petitioners sought a direction to restrain the Centre from evicting them
> from Government quarters.
>
> "The petitioners may be compelled to return to the violent situation where
> from they were forced to flee. Forcing the petitioners to return to the area
> where they were persecuted violates the principles of International Law
> forbidding the expulsion of a refuse into an area where such person might be
> again subjected to persecution," the court said.
>
> "The order cancelling the allotment of the petitioners, the order of
> eviction are hereby set aside and quashed," the court said adding "till such
> time the Government is able to provide alternative accommodation, the
> petitioners shall be allowed to retain the alloted accommodation".
>
> The court said that the judgement would be applicable in all such cases
> where the state has been unable to ensure safety and security of people in
> case they return to the place of their residence.
>
> The High Court observed, "Instead of facilitating the resettlement and
> rehabilitation of the petitioners who are internally displaced persons as
> per the declared policy, they have arbitrarily been exposed to the
> additional trauma of the threat of forcible evictions and the uncertainty of
> seeking the adjudication by pursuing the litigation.
>
> "In these circumstances, the petitioners are entitled to exemplary costs
> from the respondents in as much as the threat of forcible eviction by the
> process resorted to by the respondents impacts the fundamental rights of the
> petitioners," the court said.
>
> "The right to shelter of every person has been recognised as an essential
> concomitant of right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution. It would
> clearly be covered under the definition of a human rights under Protection
> of Human Rights Act," the court said.
>
> It said the case is "testimony to events which lead to unprecedented ethnic
> cleansing of a minority community from the Kashmir valley on account of
> inability of the State to protect them and their property from violence, who
> as a result, were rendered homeless.
>
> "Such turmoil was faced by the minority community in the State of Jammu and
> Kashmir after December 1989," the court said. (PTI)