Weaponizing Security: The Human Rights Crisis in Indian occupied Kashmir Under AFSPA and UAPA

Weaponizing Security: The Human Rights Crisis in Indian occupied Kashmir Under AFSPA and UAPA



By Altaf Hussain Wani

 

The Indian government’s relentless militarization of Kashmir is not a story of counter-terrorism, but of state-sanctioned repression. For decades, New Delhi has weaponized security laws like the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) to crush dissent, silence civil society, and deny Kashmiris their fundamental rights. These laws, framed as tools to combat insurgency, have instead institutionalized impunity, normalized violence, and turned Kashmir into a laboratory for testing authoritarian governance. The international community’s silence in the face of this crisis is not just a failure of diplomacy—it is complicity in the erasure of Kashmiri humanity.

AFSPA: A License to Kill, Disappear, and Terrorize


Enacted in 1990, AFSPA grants Indian security forces sweeping immunity to use lethal force, conduct arbitrary arrests, and detain individuals indefinitely in Kashmir, designated as a “disturbed area.” This law has created a culture of state terror. Civil society groups estimate over 10,000 enforced disappearances and thousands of extrajudicial killings since its implementation. Families of victims are trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare: to prosecute security personnel, they must first secure government approval—a near-impossible hurdle, as the state prioritizes protecting its agents over delivering justice.

 

The Act’s brutality extends beyond individual atrocities. Entire communities, like the nomadic Gujjar Bakarwals, face collective punishment—forced displacement, restrictions on movement, and the destruction of livelihoods—under the guise of “counter-insurgency.” The UN has repeatedly condemned AFSPA for violating international humanitarian law, yet India dismisses these critiques, weaponizing the rhetoric of “national security” to deflect accountability. When then-UN Special Rapporteur (SR) Christof Heyns warned in 2012 that AFSPA perpetuates a “climate of fear,” New Delhi responded not with reform, but with deeper militarization.

 

AFSPA is not a relic of the past. It is a living instrument of oppression, enabling the Indian state to treat Kashmiris as perpetual suspects in their own homeland.


UAPA: Criminalizing Dissent, Erasing Civic Space

If AFSPA empowers physical violence, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) facilitates legalized repression. Amended repeatedly to broaden its scope, the UAPA’s vague definitions of “terrorism” and “unlawful activities” allow authorities to criminalize journalism, activism, and even social media posts. Since 2019, when India unilaterally revoked Kashmir’s autonomy, hundreds of Kashmiris—including journalists, students, and human rights defenders—have been detained under this law, often without trial for years.

 

The UAPA’s design is deliberate: to isolate and stigmatize. As  UN Special Rapporteur in many joint communication from 2019 time and again stated anti-terror laws like the UAPA are wielded to “delegitimize and intimidate” dissenters. In Kashmir, this has meant raids on press clubs, bans on peaceful assemblies, and the labeling of NGOs as “terrorist fronts.” Families seeking justice for disappeared relatives face harassment, while lawyers defending UAPA detainees risk being branded “anti-national.” The law’s overreach violates the most basic principles of legal precision and proportionality, reducing due process to a fiction.The message is clear: in India occupied Kashmir, demanding accountability is itself an act of terrorism.


The Myth of “Social Terrorism” and the War on Self-Determination

India’s repression is rooted in a perverse narrative that conflates Kashmiri self-determination with terrorism. Peaceful calls for autonomy are dismissed as “separatist threats,” while political parties advocating dialogue are banned. The 2019 siege of Kashmir—marked by mass arrests, internet blackouts, and a military lockdown—exposed this strategy in its rawest form. Over 8 million Kashmiris were cut off from the world as New Delhi unilaterally erased the region’s constitutional status, a move condemned by UN experts as “collective punishment.”

 

This repression mirrors global trends where states exploit counter-terrorism frameworks to quash dissent. As SR Ben Saul emphasized in 2023, governments increasingly label grassroots movements as “violent extremism” to justify draconian measures. In Kashmir, this rhetoric has legitimized the surveillance, torture, and killing of civilians, all while India positions itself as a “victim” of cross-border terrorism.

 

Structural Complicity: The Failure of Global Accountability

The crisis in Kashmir is not just India’s failure—it is a failure of the international system. Despite decades of documentation by UN bodies, including the Working Group on Enforced Disappearances, India has ignored calls to repeal AFSPA, reform the UAPA, or permit unfettered access to investigators. The UN’s counter-terrorism architecture, as noted in the Global Center on Cooperative Security’s Blue Sky reports, remains woefully inadequate to address such systemic abuse.

 

Regional organizations, tasked with mediating human rights violations, have also faltered. Bodies like the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) remain paralyzed by geopolitics, while India’s allies shield it from scrutiny. This impunity emboldens New Delhi: when the European Parliament proposed a resolution condemning Kashmir’s lockdown, India dismissed it as “meddling,” revealing the hollowness of global human rights commitments.

 

A Path Forward: Justice, Not Oppression

Ending Kashmir’s nightmare requires more than symbolic gestures. The international community must:

 

​1.​Demand the immediate repeal of AFSPA and overhaul of the UAPA to align with international law.

​2.​Impose targeted sanctions on officials implicated in atrocities, freezing assets and banning travel.

​3.​Support independent investigations into enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings, leveraging the Universal Periodic Review to hold India accountable.

​4.​Fund and protect Kashmiri civil society, ensuring activists and journalists can operate without fear of reprisal.

The 20th anniversary of the UN Special Rapporteur’s mandate on counter-terrorism and human rights must mark a turning point. As scholar Franziska Praxl-Tabuchi argues, incremental reforms are futile; only systemic change can dismantle structures of oppression. Kashmiris do not need empty solidarity—they need the world to match their courage with action.

 

The choice is stark: will the international community uphold the values it professes, or remain complicit in Kashmir’s suffocation? The answer will define the future of human rights in an increasingly authoritarian world.

 

The writer is Chairman Kashmir Institute of International Relations (KIIR) Can be reached :- saleeemwani@hotmail.com   , X.   @sultan1913

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