1) A total of 248 killings.
2) 260 major cordon and search operations (CASOs).
3) 138 residential houses destroyed.
4) 70 military operations.
5) 82 freedom fighters killed.
6) 66 civilians murdered by the occupying forces.
7) Death of 100 Indian occupying forces.
8) 200 residential and commercial properties and land measuring approximately 100 acres under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) across IOJK.
9) 171 instances of Internet Shutdown
This Annual Report 2023 is an attempt to offer an overview of the Human Rights situation in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJK). India’s massive human rights abuses have been persistently ongoing for 7 decades in IOJK. These abuses include heightened militarization, land grabbing by the Indian Occupying Forces and the occupying authorities, extrajudicial killings, torture, and arbitrary detentions, prohibition of the public assembly, mass imprisonments, curbs on press and freedom of speech, nomenclature and demographic changes with a larger settler colonial design. This year witnessed at least 248 killings in different incidents of state violence in IOJK: which includes the killing of at least 82 freedom fighters, 66 extra-judicial killings of civilians, and 100 Indian Occupying Forces personnel from January to December 2023. During this period, at least 260 Cordon and Search Operations (CASOs) and Cordon and Destroy Operations (CADOs) were conducted by the Indian Occupying forces. At least 70 encounters took place between Indian Occupying Forces and the freedom fighters of Kashmir. During these CASOs, vandalism, and destruction of nearly 138 civilian properties were reported. Also, 171 instances of Internet Shut down were reported from January to December 2023 in IOJK.
On 11 December 2023, the Supreme Court of India (SCI) pronounced the verdict of the 16 hearings pertaining to the petitions challenging the August 5, 2019 unilateral decision of the Indian parliament to abrogate the semi-autonomous status of UN-recognized disputed territory. The 476 page judgment upheld the validity of the CO 273 bifurcating the erstwhile state into two Union Territories – Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. The mainstream political parties, Kashmiri civil society and renowned Indian jurists including former SCI judges criticized the verdict of five-judge Constitutional Bench stating that the court has misinterpreted the constitutional framework including the federal structure and distorted the legal history of Jammu and Kashmir.
LFK has documented and analyzed India’s institutionalized and systematic discrimination against Kashmiris within the framework of the definition of Genocide and ethnic cleansing under international law. It has further analyzed the laws, policies and practices which have been newly introduced as the transitional phase of settler colonialism to change the demography of Muslim dominated region. Furthermore, it has documented specific repressive measures against the selected individuals, serious human rights violations and crimes under international law, committed against the Civilian population with the intent to maintain this system of colonial domination.
LFK concludes that international community must take cognizance of the evidence presented in this report. All the cases of extrajudicial killing, arbitrary detention, and torture of civilians, the curbs on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion, the demographic changes, and all other measures aimed at the ethnic cleansing of Kashmir Muslims must not go unheeded.
