Refugee status a reminder of unfinished battle for justice: Kashmiri Pandit body

Jammu: Panun Kashmir, an organisation advocating for displaced Kashmiri Pandits, said on Friday that refugee status was not an identity but a reminder of the "unfinished battle for justice".

At a function to mark World Refugee Day, Panun Kashmir organising secretary B L Kaul denounced the "global silence around the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir" and urged the community to consolidate its demand for rightful restitution, not symbolic gestures.

"The refugee status is not an identity but a reminder of the unfinished battle for justice. Today is not a day of mourning, but of assertion. We gather not to seek pity but to remind the world of the betrayal we continue to endure," Kaul said.

Former director general of J&K Police S P Vaid spoke on the Pahalgam attack, in which 26 people were killed by terrorists. All but one of those killed in the attack were tourists.

“The threats were real, the targets were known, yet the system failed. Why?" he said.

Referring to his time in the police, he said every operation meant to safeguard Kashmiri Pandits was either delayed or diluted. “I witnessed how the machinery was systematically programmed to ignore red flags. Pahalgam wasn’t a failure of intelligence. It was a failure of intent,” he said.

Legal luminary and former chairperson of the Jonaraja Institute of Genocide and Atrocities Studies, Tito Ganju, spoke on the international framework of genocide studies. “Kashmiri Hindus are not just victims of displacement but of a systemic and prolonged genocide,” he declared.

He warned against any attempt at forced reconciliation without justice, saying it would be a “second wound inflicted on an unhealed scar.” Drawing upon international conventions, he said that the 2005 UN basic principles on the right to remedy and reparation prohibit enforced reconciliation without recognition of the crime and yet, that is precisely what is being attempted in the name of symbolic return and political adjustment.

“We are caught in the deadly triad of genocide, denial of genocide, and now, the consolidation of genocide. The perpetrators are being mainstreamed, and the victims are being told to forget,” he said.

Ganju categorically rejected the call for a moment of silence, saying, “Our silence has been weaponised for 35 years. Today, we speak, we name, and we indict.” Chairman of Panun Kashmir Dr Ajay Chrungoo said, “The massacre at Pahalgam is part of the same uninterrupted genocidal campaign. The victims of Kashmir are now being asked to vote in exile, cohabit with perpetrators, and stay silent for peace. This is nothing but the political consolidation of our genocide,” he said.

He dismissed all talk of reconciliation as psychological warfare against victims and termed the return to the Valley without justice a “fraud in the name of democracy”.