HVK Archives: Give Kashmiri Pandits homes outside valley
Give Kashmiri Pandits homes outside valley - Times Of India
T.V. Parasuram
()
August 13, 1998
Title: Give Kashmiri Pandits homes outside valley
Author: T.V. Parasuram
Publication: Times Of India
Date: August 13, 1998
Kashmiri Pandits, Who have been driven out of the valley, should
he settled outside the region, Hiram Ruiz, a policy analyst at
the U.S. Committee for Refugees, has said.
Admiting that fundamentalist terrorists had driven the Pandits
out by systematic "ethnic cleansing=94, Mr Ruiz told reporters here
on Tuesday that he agreed with the committee's stand that
"Kashmiri Muslim and Hindu Pandits, are "groups in conflict.
Drawing on the Bosnian experience, he said the Pandits would not
he able to resettle in the valley though that was what they
desired and what the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir had
pledged.
In Bosnia, even though the allies have been sending the displaced
back to the areas from which they had been driven out, they found
that they were no longer able to stay there, he said.
Mr Ruiz, who has just returned from I three-week trip to South
Asia during which he visited camps for the Pandits in Jammu and
camps for the displaced in the north-eastern states, said he
found conditions at the camps better than he had expected, though
not perfect.
In Jammu Mr Ruiz said he was told that there were 2,50,000
displaced Pandits in camps at the peak, but now the number has
come down to 110,000.
Of these, 59,500 get aid. Others, he said, were government em
employees who got their salaries though not their posts.
About the conflicts in the north-eastern region, Mr Ruiz said the
Centre should play a more active role to settle it.
"At Present, the government has left it to the states, which in
turn has left it to the local authorities who are not equipped to
handle ethnic conflicts he said.
On the whole, Mr Ruiz gave more credit to the government than the
annual report of the committee published last June.
The committee said among other things: ndian's response to the
refugee populations it posted in 1997 was as varied as the
refugees themselves. Because India has no legal framework for
determining refugee status, it deals with refugees-on an ad hoc
basis, which has led to refugees being used as Pawns in regional
geopolitics.
Back
Top
|
