UN’s 25000 Euros brings relief to ‘activists’, despair to victims

Rapporteur Margaret Sekaggya learns about the business on dead bodies in Kashmir

Ahmed Ali Fayyaz

SRINAGAR, Jan 20: One of the journalists working for premier international news agency Reuters in Srinagar has been feeding families of five disappeared persons out of his monthly salary. Yet another, who himself survived a fatal attack on his life in a bomb blast at his office in 1995, has been providing sustenance to another group of the victims of enforced disappearances and bloodshed.

Hundreds of opulent businessmen have been silently doing similar noble work to provide succour to civilian sufferers of the 21-year-long armed conflict whose actual numbers are claimed to be 8,000 to 10,000 but impartially believed to be around 5,000. In approximately 70:30 ratio, these ill-fated civilians have disappeared in custody of security forces and separatist militants respectively.

Most of these civilians, owing allegiance to conflicting political ideologies, have vanished in the first 10 years of turmoil. With remarkable downswing, armed forces as well as guerrilla groups have continued to eliminate soft targets but those who disappeared in the last 11 years are in hundreds, not in thousands. Police have not received even a dozen of such complainants in last three years.

However, the numbers of people claiming to be fighting for protection of human rights and recovery of the disappeared persons have risen phenomenally over the years. Interests heightened enormously after the ‘human rights activists” learned through media last year that the United Nation’s Working Group on Involuntary Enforced Disappearances (WGIED) was providing a substantial financial assistance to families of such disappeared persons in Kashmir. Both factions of the lately split Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) began a flurry of activity to attract attention of the UN group.

Over a dozen of demonstrations were organised in Sher-e-Kashmir Park in Civil Lines here as young children and elderly women, describing themselves as families of the disappeared civilians, issued passionate appeals to the world to support them and help in recovery of their loved ones.

It was during the maiden visit of the UN’s Special Rapporteur, Margaret Sekaggya, that the much exploited families of the real victims learned on Monday that WGIED had provided the first ever financial support to them in the form of Euros 25000. Soon it surfaced that the account of one faction of their organisation was being operated by “unknown persons” in New Delhi, rather than any board of directors in Srinagar.

Even as WGIED had specifically made it a condition that the money equivalent to over Rs 17 Lakh would be operated “in democratic and transparent manner”, it became known that entire operation was restricted to two New Delhi-based female activists, including a Kashmiri filmmaker, and President of a faction of APDP, Parveena Ahangar. Parveena, whose son Javed Ahangar once disappeared allegedly in custody of Border Security Force nearly 20 years ago in Batmaloo area, had launched her own group after she broke away from the original organisation over charges of “nepotism and fraudulent handling” against her former colleagues.

Enjoying support of several groups based from New Delhi to Europe to USA, this uneducated middle-aged woman has been at the forefront of most of the demonstrations organised by her group in Srinagar. Last year, she was among the activists who held a demonstration outside the Parliament in New Delhi and also met President of India Pratibha Patil.

At Skaggya’s news conference here on Wednesday, one of the young APDP female activists walked out to register her strong protest against the way she had been clandestinely removed from office-bearers of the body and her “memorandum” to be submitted to the UN Rapporteur had been replaced by the one drafted by a Delhi-based human rights activist. She confronted Parveena how she had signed a document without being able to read a word out of it. She later revealed to mediapersons that in violation of the UN group guidelines and conditions, recipient APDP had got the money deposited in Parveena’s personal account.

The angry APDP activist alleged that Parveena’s son Yasir was single-handedly operating the bank account and its password was with a Delhi-based activist. She further revealed that like her old rivals, Parveena too had appointed daughter Saima and niece, Suby, at the APDP office at Hyderpora. “This whole money is being brazenly swindled. Not a pie is reaching the real victims. This is, in fact, business on the dead bodies”, Ms Arjimand Khan complained. She said that she would soon write to media and everybody at the UN how “vested interests” were looting the world in the name of victims of the Kashmir conflict.

While Parveena was not reachable for comment, APDP’s Legal Advisor, Advocate Hafizullah Mir, confirmed to Early Times that there was no board of directors. He said that due to recent disturbance in Valley, APDP could not fulfill its task of constituting the Board of Advisors. He also claimed that the money received from the UN group was “not for families of the disappeared persons”. “It has been decided that the money would be paid to the lawyers fighting suits of the victims in different judicial courts”, Mir said.

END