NEW DELHI
- It took Supreme Court lawyer Sonia Raj Sood just one visit to Indian-administered Kashmir to find her true calling in life -- to fight atrocities against Kashmiris attributed to India's security forces.
"You may read about it but you only really understand it when you get to Srinagar," Sood told AFP, referring to the summer capital of India's zone of Kashmir.
"You realise that atrocities are being committed against an entire race and ... they are being committed by our army," she said.
The "pain and suffering and trauma" she saw in Kashmir prompted her to launch her own one-woman campaign to persuade Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to rein in the troops.
Since that first trip to Kashmir in February this year, the 40-year-old Supreme Court advocate has criss-crossed India, Pakistan and Britain in a bid to persuade prominent personalities to write letters to Singh urging him to order a halt to human rights violations there.
A bold initiative
The dynamic yet unlikely activist -- she was once married to a Maharashtra prince and lived in a palace near Mumbai -- began her campaign in India, twisting the arms of colleagues and political leaders until they fired off letters to the Indian premier.
She then crossed the border into Pakistan where she sweet-talked a string of parliamentarians, including Chaudhry Shujat Hussain, president of the majority party in the National Assembly, to write to Singh.
"I would urge you to take a bold initiative by seeking the withdrawal of Indian troops from Jammu and Kashmir, from those areas where human rights violations have been documented," wrote Hussain.
She also got former Pakistan cricket captain Imran Khan, now leader of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf or Movement for Justice party, to urge a pullout of Indian troops from Kashmir, where they have been battling an Islamic insurgency since 1989.
"I am of the view that soldiers are not trained to operate in civilian areas -- regardless of which country they belong to," wrote the cricketing great.
"I want you to rethink India's strategy in Kashmir and ease the plight of the long suffering people by withdrawing troops from civilian areas of the valley."
Being a lawyer, Sood also sought -- and received -- the support of the Islamabad Bar Association.
After Pakistan, she headed for Britain where she again rounded on politicians and lawyers.
As to be expected, members of the All Parliamentary Group on Kashmir in the British parliament threw in their lot as did a host of leading activists -- including Tony Benn -- from the Third World Solidarity group.
"We ... are writing to express our profound concern at the long-standing problems of human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir.
As a respected world leader we would entreat you to make every effort to resolve the Kashmir issue," wrote the Third World Solidarity activists.
Sood's trip to Britain also prompted a spate of letters to Singh from civic and religious leaders as well as from top lawyers.
Future goals
Her next goal is to get leaders in the United States to put pressure on the Indian premier until he makes good the promise he made during a visit to Srinagar in May that there will be "zero tolerance" for rights violations.
The Indian army has an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 soldiers in Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed in full by both countries.
The arch-rivals, who have fought two wars over the picturesque Himalayan region since independence from Britain in 1947, have been engaged in a slow-moving peace process since January 2004 but have made little headway in resolving their core dispute over Kashmir.
Rights groups in Kashmir claim that atrocities are regularly committed by the security forces, but the military denies this and says all complaints are investigated and perpetrators prosecuted.
Sood believes that to the contrary in fact very little has been done to halt the abuses and says a culture of impunity has developed in the decades that Indian soldiers have been deployed among the Kashmiris.
"When an army has been in a civilian area for an extraordinarily long time, atrocities will take place," she said.
"When a soldier is not allowed to go home for two years, he will look for women there -- which means there's rape all the time," she said.
Other abuses include beating up of locals as well as abductions, imprisonment without trial and extra-judicial killings. she said.
Human rights groups put the number of rapes at about 10 a year in Kashmir but Sood argues that many go unreported for fear of further victimisation and because of the stigma that rape attaches in the Muslim-majority community.
Sood said her immediate goal was to get the Indian prime minister to rein in the troops and halt rights violations.
"My longer term goal is to have some of the army out (of Kashmir) -- and definitely out of the civilian areas."
Though continuing her practice as a lawyer, Sood said her life's focus had changed dramatically.
"When I went to Srinagar I woke up. I thought that this is what I want to do with my life."
AFP
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