Prof. Baker's Testimony Shocked the Conscience of the 52nd UN Commission on Human Rights

After an appearance on American television I was contacted by a number of US citizens, both Muslims and Christians, asking if I would even consider attempting to enter the sealed Valley of Kashmir to observe first-hand whether the stories of torture, rape, kidnapping and denial of the most basic human rights to the Kashmiri people were true.

Realising my own life would be in jeopardy, in July of 1992, I entered Kashmir with video and still cameras. Fortunately, I was able to bring several of the video tapes and photographs out of the Valley, and they attest to the horror of the once beautiful and Happy Valley which has been turned into a Valley of Death.

Dr. Abdul Ahad Guru [was assassinated by Indian army in Srinagar, April 1st, 1993] the only Cardio-Vascular surgeon for more than four million Kashmiris, spoke on camera recounting and detailing the daily atrocities inflicted on the people by more than 650,000 Indian occupation force. During my interview, Dr. Guru made it clear that due to curfews and crackdowns, innocent Kashmiri civilians are dying. He said no one is allowed to move on the roads, even for medical emergencies such as to help a 70-year-old woman who died from a heart attack.

Dr. Guru spoke of the shortage of basic medicines in all the hospitals due to the embargo on pharmaceutical by the Indian authorities. I personally went to twenty pharmacies with long lines of people even though the shelves were bare and empty.

In the Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences, I filmed and interviewed numerous civilian victims of Indian occupation forces. For example, Abdul Rashid Kakroo, a forty-three-year old ambulance driver, arrived at the scene of a shooting by Indian occupation forces, when he was finally given permission to come out of his ambulance and help transport the dying victims, he was first severely beaten and then shot twice by Indian soldiers. He was later brought to the hospital where I interviewed him.

The testimony of little ten-year old Shakeela is worth mentioning. When her village was attacked and the people started fleeing their home for fear of being shot, she too fled with her two younger relatives and jumped into a canal, plunging their heads underwater in an attempt to avoid being shot. Unable to hold their breath they surfaced and were immediately fired upon. A five-year old boy was shot dead, an eleven-year old was seriously wounded and little Shakeela, screaming in shock and horror was told to come out of the canal with her hands raised. As she did so, she was shot through the right eye. I wish every one of you could see this video, as I sat with Shakeela whose entire right eye, facial bones and skull were completely blown out. As I sat next to her I could not help but think of my own two beautiful daughters. Yes, after 30 transfusions of blood she survived, but what is her future? The beautiful face of this little girl is now shattered and disfigured by a "brave soldiers bullet."

My interviews with Kashmiri women who had been brutally raped by Indian soldiers contains untold misery. I interviewed a once beautiful young woman who had been kept naked in a pit for ten days by Indian soldiers, starved and repeatedly raped, her body covered with festering sores which resulted when the soldiers extinguished their cigarettes on her flesh. Finally thrown into a river, she was bayoneted in the head and left for dead with a terrible scar across her once beautiful face. One day after my interview, she gave birth to an Indian soldier's child. She has suffered a permanent mental breakdown.

Rape in Kashmir is not the result of a few undisciplined soldiers, but rather an active strategy of Indian forces to humiliate, intimidate and demoralise the Kashmiri people. This is evidenced by the fact that a number of the raped women I interviewed had been raped in front of their own families, their own husbands, and their own children.

The basic right to education is also being denied to the Kashmiri people. Most schools are closed, and the male students cannot take their examinations for fear of being arrested upon leaving the university. The village streets of Kashmir are empty of young men from the ages of fifteen to fifty!

Moreover, I personally witnessed beatings, shootings, and assorted violations of human decency. The people of Kashmir are suffering on a scale which is far exceeding the suffering of the people of Palestine, Bosnia, or any number of other countries and cultures.

Furthermore, I visited a special cemetery of martyred children on three separate occasions. I witnessed the burials of a thirteen and ten year old. At both burials I approached the grieving families with a sense of guilt and helplessness. When the parents, family and friends realised who I was, despite the agony and grief which they felt, they lovingly unwrapped the bodies of their children for me to see the bullet holes, the torn flesh of innocent youth. Then, with hardly a word and tears streaming down their faces, the mothers lifted their outstretched arms with palms turned upward and looking into my eyes asked simply, why?

(Author of the Kashmir Happy Valley, Valley of Death, Prof. William Wayne Baker is the President of the Christians and Muslims for Peace, Garden Grove, CA).