Washington: There is no greater threat to human rights and civil liberties than terrorism and radical extremism, a prominent American organisation representing Kashmiri Pandits have told a US Congressional Commission, asking it not to be hijacked by politically motivated witnesses. In a statement for record for Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, the Kashmiri Overseas Association (KOA) expressed its disappointment that the Commission chose not to reach out to the community members who have been silent victims of human rights over the last 30 years. The Democratic Party-dominated Commission, a bipartisan Congressional Caucus of the US House of Representatives, held a hearing on the human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir on Thursday. “This would have elicited far wider response from potential expert witnesses, non-government organisations working in this field and wider public and would have enriched the Commission’s hearing,” said the statement submitted by the KOA .
Asserting that the situation in Jammu and Kashmir is a direct product of cross-border terrorism, the KOA said that it is a widely documented fact that Pakistan has created, trained, armed and nurtured terrorists as a matter of its state policy in South Asia. This has resulted in the death of over 42,000 civilians in Jammu and Kashmir alone over the last three decades.