240 women from AJK, Pak stranded in IIOJK await UN help for safe return

Two hundred women from Azad Kashmir and 40 from Pakistan along with their 300 children are stranded in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir as Modi regime is denying them permission to repatriate to their homeland.

Jammu and Kashmir Council for Human Rights led by Dr Nazir Gilani in a statement said that three such women have committed suicides, five were divorced and the 15 were widows. What is more pitiable is that all these women are not accessible because they have no contact number due to lack of documents.

These women had married to the Kashmiri youth who had crossed into Azad Kashmir in face of Indian atrocities in occupied Jammu and Kashmir. These youth along with their spouses and children returned to occupied Jammu and Kashmir under a rehabilitation policy announced by the-then government of Omar Abdullah in IIOJK.

Some of these returnees have died and women have become widows. Some women could not adjust with their in-laws and in the local community and have been divorced. They all have children. Unfortunately, the local administration has dragged feet on their rehabilitation and now these women have no local support, no rights and no future.

These women face police violence whenever they protest and demand to be either rehabilitated as announced by the authorities in 2010 or be allowed to return to their families in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan. They are called in by the police, harassed and intimidated.

The non-local women whose husbands have died in IIOJK are left without any travel document. They desire to visit or return to their families living in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan.

The JKCHR demanded of the UN Human Rights Council and the High Commissioner for Human Rights to involve International Committee of Red Cross to negotiate with Indian government for a safe return of these women and children to their respective families in Azad Kashmir and Pakistan.