As news broke that India’s army had commended a senior officer who tied a Kashmiri man to a jeep and used him as a human shield, thoughts turned to the message this sends on how the forthcoming stages of this conflict might unfold.
The Indian media has been full of praise for the actions of Major Nitin Leetul Gogoi.
Many commentators have insisted that the army Major’s choice was between firing on the crowd, submitting to the mob and using a human shield – he chose the latter and as such, blood shed was avoided. But what kind of a message does this send to Kashmir?
Indeed Captain Amarinder Singh, Chief Minister for Punjab and senior Congress party voice said took to Twitter to claim, ‘Happy to hear of possible bravery award for ‘human shield’ officer Major Nitin Gogoi.’
As a senior Indian politician Amarinder Singh and former Captain in the Sikh Regiment, he is presumably the best placed to know that the use of ‘human shields’ is a war crime according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The statute is described as, ‘utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts.’
The statute does not take into account whether or not lives the saved, human shields are illegal no matter the circumstance.
After successfully leveraging international law to stop Pakistan’s attempts to execute accused spy Kulbhushan Jadhav at the International Court of Justice, it is not implausible to worry that India might find themselves back at the Hague, but on the wrong side of the dock over its increasingly visible aggression in Kashmir and acts like those for which the Major has been commended.
Indeed, it only takes a cursory glance at the news to see that Indian troops are under a severe amount of pressure in the Valley, and although they are seemingly, on the whole, very patient when faced with mobs throwing stones, we live in the day-and-age of the camera phone, and all their wrong-doing will rightly go viral.
And with that global scrutiny and condemnation. The incident has sparked outrage from human rights activists.
‘Rewarding an officer who is under investigation for a human rights violation suggests that the army seems to be willing to not just overlook, but actually valorise an act of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment amounting to torture,’ Aakar Patel, executive director of Amnesty International India, said in a statement.
Kashmiri human rights activist Khurram Parvez said the award showed India could behave with ‘absolute impunity’ in the region, where stone-throwing protesters regularly clash with troops and police.
‘This reward means India upholds torture as a means of saving lives and as a part of its counter-insurgency war in Kashmir,’ he told AFP.
‘This is a signal to people in Kashmir that India can do anything here with absolute impunity.’
Rachel Kerr, Senior Lecturer in War Studies at King’s College London told MailOnline India that at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, politician Radovan Karadžić and military leader Ratko Mladić were both charged with war crimes (at the Hague) for using UN peacekeepers as human shields.
Human shields were also used by Saddam Hussein in Iraq 1990-91 and by Milosevic in Serbia in 1999, arguably, though no prosecutions were made in either instance.
Author Mizra Waheed took to Twitter to condemn India’s actions in Kashmir and suggest that there are larger implications for the precedent set in how India’s military treats the Kashmiri people.
Waheed worte: ‘What kind of moral order are we looking at when the world’s largest democracy celebrates a war crime by a member of its armed forces.
‘Essentially, the Indian state has decided to honour an officer who’s guilty of torture.
‘This is indeed a watershed moment for the country.’
Definition of human shields according to the Red Cross The prohibition of using human shields in the Geneva Conventions, Additional Protocol I and the Statute of the International Criminal Court are couched in terms of using the presence (or movements) of civilians or other protected persons to render certain points or areas (or military forces) immune from military operations. Most examples given in military manuals, or which have been the object of condemnations, have been cases where persons were actually taken to military objectives in order to shield those objectives from attacks.The military manuals of New Zealand and the United Kingdom give as examples the placing of persons in or next to ammunition trains.There were many condemnations of the threat by Iraq to round up and place prisoners of war and civilians in strategic sites and around military defence points.Other condemnations on the basis of this prohibition related to rounding up civilians and putting them in front of military units in the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia and Liberia.In the Review of the Indictments in the Karadžić and Mladić case, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia qualified physically securing or otherwise holding peacekeeping forces against their will at potential NATO air targets, including ammunition bunkers, a radar site and a communications centre, as using ‘human shields’.It can be concluded that the use of human shields requires an intentional co-location of military objectives and civilians or persons hors de combat with the specific intent of trying to prevent the targeting of those military objective
Indian Army Major Leetul Gogoi, who provoked controversy by tying a local Kashmiri onto the front of a jeep as a human shield to avoid attack from stone-pelters, has revealed how his impromptu act saved at least 12 lives.
‘I did this only to save the local people. Had I fired, there would have been more than 12 casualties. With this idea, I have saved many people’s lives,’ Gogoi of 53 Rashtriya Rifles told reporters.
It was for the first time since the April 9 incident during Srinagar by-poll, which had created an uproar in the Valley and deepened the divide between security forces and civilians, that the army officer narrated the entire incident before the media.
Gogoi said he got a distress call from an ITBP team that around 1,200 people had surrounded ITBP personnel and the polling staff inside Utligam polling station where petrol bombs were being hurled.
He said when they reached the spot, the crowd – which included women and children – started throwing stones at them.
Even stone boulders were thrown upon them from rooftops, and as a result they could not even move out of their vehicles.
The crowd did not respond to any announcement. Gogoi said at that time, he saw a short person standing close to him who appeared to be the ring leader.
When they tried to catch him, he tried to ran away but failed. His name was Farooq Ahmed Dar. He denied being a stone-pelter.
After holding him, the army team started walking towards the polling booth and rescued the staff.
Meanwhile, according to his account, their mine-protected vehicle became stuck in the mud which gave the mob another chance to pelt stones.
‘They became more violent and petrol bombs were also hurled. At that moment, suddenly the idea of tying him to the vehicle came.
‘By seeing this, the stone-pelting had stopped for a while. We got a window to come out safely from that area,’ said the major.
Reflecting that the army supports his action, Army Chief General Bipin Rawat has awarded COAS (Chief of Army Staff) commendation for sustained efforts in counterinsurgency operations to him during his recent visit to Jammu and Kashmir.
A video of the incident had gone viral leading to an uproar. The J&K Police had also registered an FIR against the security forces.
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