Islamabad: A US-based human rights watchdog on Thursday expressed concern over human rights abuses in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) and urged the international community to pressure Islamabad to end the violations.
Human Rights Watch released a 71-page report entitled, With Friends Like These: Human Rights Violations in Azad (Free) Kashmir, which accused Pakistan's military of routinely torturing Kashmiri political activists and giving more freedoms to outlawed terrorists.
The Asia director of Human Rights Watch, Brad Adams, alleged Pakistani authorities actively suppress Kashmiris seeking an independent state separate from both Pakistan and India.
''There is an environment of political repression,'' Adams said during a press conference in Islamabad. ''Those who are in favor of independence are prosecuted.''
Adams highlighted a law under which only those who support Kashmir's union with Pakistan can contest elections for a regional parliament.
Pakistan and India have fought two of three wars over Kashmir, a Himalayan region split by both nuclear-armed Asian rivals and claimed by each in its entirety.
PoK is also known as Azad (Free) Kashmir, a term used to describe how Pakistan claimed it from India one year after this country's 1947 founding.
More than 68,000 people have been killed since terrorists launched insurgency in 1989 to win independence or a merger with predominantly Muslim Pakistan.
The rights group also alleged that torture is routinely used in both Pakistan and PoK.
''Human Rights Watch has documented incidents of torture by the intelligence services and others acting at the army's behest, but knows of no cases in which members of military and paramilitary security and intelligence agencies have been prosecuted or even disciplined for acts of torture or mistreatment,'' the group said in a statement.
Pakistan's deputy information minister, Tariq Azim, rejected the report and said Kashmir was free of human rights violations.
''This report shows that the people who wrote it had lack of knowledge, and unfortunately they painted a wrong and misleading picture about the human rights situation in Azad Kashmir,'' Azim told The Associated Press.
Adams noted that the human rights situation was also bad on the Indian side of Kashmir.
''We are not saying that the problem is rampant in PoK,'' he said. ''We say that the problem needs to be addressed.''
The Human Rights Watch report followed a recent trip Adams made to Srinagar, where he accused New Delhi and Islamic terrorists of killing civilians there.
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