Human rights violations have risen dramatically in Indian-administered J&K since 2019: UN Independent Expert Fernand de Varennes.

NEW YORK -- "Human rights violations have risen dramatically in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir since 2019 when the Government of India revoked the special status of the region", warned a UN Independent Expert, one week before a scheduled G20 meeting is scheduled to be held in Srinagar.

"By holding a G20 meeting of the working group on tourism on 22-24 May", warned Fernand de Varennes, UN Special Rapporteur on minority issues, "the Government of India is seeking to normalize what some have described as a military occupation by instrumentalising a G20 meeting and portray an international 'seal of approval", despite what Volker Trk, the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, told the U.N. Human Rights Council a few weeks ago was a 'worrying human rights situation in the Kashmir region."

The Special Rapporteur issued a statement on Monday describing the massive rights violations as including torture, extrajudicial killings, denial of political participation rights of Kashmiri Muslims and minorities, following the suspension of democratic rights and local elections with direct rule from New Delhi on 6 August 2019.

"The situation there has - if anything - become much worse since myself and fellow UN independent experts transmitted a communication to the Government of India in 2021. We then expressed our grave concerns that the loss of political autonomy and the implementation of the new Domicile Rules and other legislation could alter the demographic composition of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir, may result in political disenfranchisement, and significantly reduce the degree of political participation and representation of the Kashmiri and other minorities previously exercised in the former state, undermining their linguistic, cultural and religious rights", he said.

"On all counts this seems to be occurring on the...