Ensure Safety of Kashmiri Pandits, Non-Muslim Migrant Labourers in Valley: KPSS
The KPSS urged the Centre, J&K government, and security agencies to boost security around minority areas and religious sites, ensure intelligence sharing with local communities, and implement protection plans tailored to threats faced by Kashmiri Pandits and non-Muslim migrants
Srinagar: A Kashmiri Pandit organisation on Wednesday voiced its concern over the safety of a few thousand members of the Brahmin community living and non-Muslim migrant labourers working in the Valley in view of a newspaper report that they might be targeted in reprisal to the security forces going tough against the separatist following the Pahalgam terror attack.
In a statement issued here, the Kashmiri Pandit Sangarash Samiti (KPSS), a body of those Kashmiri Pandits who chose not to leave the Valley in 1990 when a vast majority of the minority community fled their homes and hearth to escape violence, said that it is seriously concerned and pained to the core with the recent intelligence reports, published in 'The New India Express', and suggesting an imminent danger to Kashmiri Pandits and non-Muslim migrant labourers in the Kashmir Valley.
“The news of The Resistance Front (TRF) orchestrating targeted retaliatory strikes — in the wake of the razing of nine terror-affiliated houses — is a spine-chilling reminder that the tiny religious minorities in Kashmir are forever hostages to the guns of both the state and non-state actors,” the statement said.
It warned. “Even if a single member of the Pandit community is harmed or targeted in this new cycle of coordinated terror, we will have no choice but to relocate from the Valley permanently.” It added, “Let it be known to everyone — this silent aspiration of many in the society to vanish us from Kashmir behind the veil of candlelight demonstrations and empty rhetoric will not remain unchecked. The so-called activism, in such a situation, is nothing but a charade to protect the perpetrators of humanity, not its victims”.
The KPSS appealed to the Central and J&K governments and all the security agencies to immediately augment security cover around minority habitations and religious establishments, facilitate actionable intelligence sharing with ground-level community representatives, implement community-specific protection regimes, acknowledging the specific threat profile of Kashmiri Pandits and migrant non-Muslim workers. It also asked for holding accountable any authority that shows negligence or indifference during this time of crisis. It said, “We are not negotiating for privilege; we are demanding the minimum — our right to live without terror”