Expert briefing at U.S. Congress: Genocide of Muslims a step away in Kashmir, Assam

Press release by Indian American Muslim Council

December 12, 2019

The world's best-known expert on genocide has said Muslims in the Indian provinces of Kashmir and Assam are just one step away from extermination.

"Preparation for a genocide is definitely under way in India," Dr. Gregory Stanton of Genocide Watch said at a Briefing at the U.S. Congress on Wednesday.

The persecution of Muslims in Assam and Kashmir "is the stage just before genocide", Dr. Stanton told an audience of Congressional and Government officials. "The next stage is extermination - that's what we call a genocide."

Dr. Stanton created the world-famous "Ten Stages of Genocide" as a presentation to the U.S. Department of State when he worked there in 1996. He also drafted UN Security Council resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda and the Burundi Commission of Inquiry, two places where genocides had occurred.
After leaving the Department of State in 1999, Dr. Stanton founded Genocide Watch, a civil society organization that says it "exists to predict, prevent, stop and punish genocide and other forms of mass murder". A former President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, his research on genocides in Cambodia and Rwanda, and of the Rohingyas is recognized worldwide.

The Congressional briefing, "Ground Reports on Kashmir & NRC", where Dr. Stanton spoke, was held at the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. It was organized by three U.S.-based civil society organizations, namely, the Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), Emgage Action, and Hindus for Human Rights (HfHR).
Saying that Assam was seeing "the construction of a pretext for expulsion [of Muslims],'' Dr. Stanton said the ongoing genocide in both Kashmir and Assam was a "classic case" and followed the pattern of the "Ten Stages of Genocide".

The first stage was "classification" of "us versus them". The second stage, "symbolization", named the victims as "foreigner". The third stage, "discrimination", 'classified [the victims] out of the group accepted for citizenship" so that they had no "human rights or civil rights of citizens" and were "discriminated against legally".

The fourth stage, dehumanization, "is when the genocidal spiral begins to go downwards. You classify the others as somehow worse than you. You give them names like 'terrorists', or even names of animals, start referring to them as a cancer in the body politic, you talk about them as a disease that must be somehow dealt with."

The fifth stage was creating an "organization" to commit the genocide: the role played by the "Indian army in Kashmir and the census takers in Assam". The sixth stage was "polarization", which is achieved by propaganda. The seventh stage was "preparation", and the eighth "persecution", where Assam and Kashmir currently were. After the ninth stage of "extermination", comes the tenth stage of "denial", Dr. Stanton said.

"[Prime Minister Narendra] Modi's regime has all the hallmarks of an incipient Nazi regime," he said. "Nationalism taken to its extreme is fascism and nazism."
Also participating in the Briefing via video link, Dr. Angana Chatterji, a scholar with UC Berkeley, slammed the crackdown in Kashmir since Mr. Modi's Government revoked the Constitutionally mandated special status of Jammu and Kashmir on August 5.

Reports have documented the "inhumane treatment and torture of children, the elderly, and women; illegal detentions, including mass detentions; the denial of the basic needs of life, the curtailment of freedom of speech and movement, the falsification of social facts and their amplification by the state, and the closure of sacred places," she said. "Cries of pain" of a torture victim were broadcast via a mosque's speaker system. "State forces have raided homes, destroyed property and mixed food with kerosene."

She criticized India's home minister, Amit Shah, for reportedly saying that "Western" human rights standards cannot be "blindly" applied to India. "Today, 129 days into the siege, the continuance of preventive detention and illegal, warrantless detention; custodial torture; the reported violation of the right to information, health, education, food and shelter, restrictions on freedom of speech and civil and political rights; and the near-complete denial of political space remain urgent, critical issues."

Dr. Chatterji said "Kashmiris that I have spoken with ask that civil society in Kashmir be given the opportunity to publicly articulate their experiences and express their anguish, rage, fear, helplessness and dissent. The international community's outrage has not been impactful thus far. When a state fails to uphold its mandate to govern within the parameters of international law, the international community must act."

Raqib Hameed Naik, a journalist from Jammu and Kashmir said the ongoing lockdown in Kashmir was "one of the worst sieges in the last decade... Officially there are no restrictions, but unofficially the government has imposed an undeclared emergency." Mr. Naik also disputed the Indian Government's claim that Indian troops had not killed any Kashmiris since August 5 when the state's special status was withdrawn.

"Let me put it on record that, so far, we have been able to document five killings by security forces. The number could be higher, but due to communication blockade and severe restrictions on the movement of the press, we have not been able to get exact figures from the different parts of the valley." Mr. Naik said he had met with "many minors" who were imprisoned "without charges". One of them, Muzamil Feroz Rah, 17, of Srinagar was arrested by the police in a "midnight raid from his home.

"[Rah] told us that he was kicked and punched by the cops and when his mother tried to stop the cops from taking him away, the cops told her to remain silent or they will kill him. He was kept inside a small, dark cell with 15 other minors. He was traded like a commodity between different police stations. Even his father was detained for two days when he went to meet Muzamil in the police station."

Mr. Naik said the courts in Kashmir were not functional as most lawyers were on strike against the incarceration of Bar Association's president at a jail outside Kashmir. In any case, "many family members are reluctant to seek judicial remedy as they fear that state might charge their kin if they approach the courts for bails."

The communication blockade was also affecting "every sector", including healthcare, IT, hospitality, banking, and education affected the most, Mr. Naik said. "The e-commerce sector dependent on the internet has seen 10,000 people lost their jobs. Thousands of children couldn't submit forms for engineering and medical entrance examinations due to the Internet shutdown.

"Patients needing dialysis, chemotherapy, and emergency surgeries, and pregnant women are unable to reach tertiary health care centers due to the transport shutdown." Communication had broken down between pharmacies and drug suppliers. "Dr. Farida Ghoghawala, who runs infertility clinics in Kashmir, hasn't been able to follow up on even a single patient in last five months due to the Internet shutdown," Mr. Naik said.

He added that he had spoken with Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI) president Sheikh Ashiq, "who told me that the handicraft sector alone has witnessed over 50,000 job losses while the hotel and restaurant industry had seen more than 30,000 people losing their jobs.
Ms. Teesta Setalvad, a Human Rights Defender, said the National Register for Citizens (NRC) in Assam, which had discriminated against Muslims in the state, was "being used to subvert human rights in Assam. There are laid down guidelines and standard operating procedures to carry out this exercise but none of it is being followed. We have to ask if this exercise is being carried out within the ambit of the constitution."

The NRC process was being used to pit "lingual communities against each other and creating fissures between different castes... A frenzy is being whipped up" in West Bengal, Meghalaya and other states "to disturb the peace and create unrest," she said.

Also joining the Briefing by video, Ms. Setalvad criticized the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) that was approved by Indian Parliament this week and aims to introduce religion as a basis to grant Indian citizenship to foreigners. The CAB, along with a nationwide NRC as Mr. Shah has announced, will "bring untold suffering to people across the country. It will damage, fundamentally and irreparably, the nature of the Indian republic. This is why they, and all citizens of conscience, demand that the government not betray the constitution," she said.
Indian American Muslim Council is the largest advocacy organization of Indian Muslims in the United States with chapters across the nation.
For more information, please visit our website at: www.iamc.com