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“PLIGHT OF THE KASHMIRI PANDITS” mentioning the U.S. Dept of State was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H4906 on May 14, 1996.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
PLIGHT OF THE KASHMIRI PANDITS
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of May 12, 1995, the gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Brown] is recognized during morning business for 5 minutes.
Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, the President might have delinked human rights from trade, but that should not be taken as a signal by other countries that the U.S. Congress no longer cares about human rights.
Indeed, concern for human rights in our own country and around the world remains a prominent concern on both sides of the aisle. Congresswoman Pelosi, Congressman Lantos, Congressman Smith of New Jersey and Congressman Wolf are just four of the many Members who have made human rights a burning concern.
I want to add my voice today to the concern about human rights in a part of the world about which we hear very little: Kashmir.
Indeed, Kashmir is one of the main trouble spots in the world today. India and Pakistan have fought two wars over Kashmir, and it remains a sore spot in Indo-Pakistani relations. Pakistan has taken every opportunity to destabilize the situation in Kashmir.
Soon after I took office in 1993, I received a group of activists from the Kashmiri Pandit community. The Pandits are not well known in this country.
They are Hindus who have been made refugees in their own country.
They are also a proud people with a special place in the history of India and the subcontinent. I might note that as India struggles to form a new government in the wake of the historic defeat suffered by the Congress Party, the Pandit community has made enormous contributions to Indian culture, including Jawaharlal Nehru.
Listening to the Pandits, I was touched by their story.
And I was shocked by the human rights abuses that have been perpetrated in Kashmir against the Hindus.
Indeed, the Pandits have been the target of a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
They have been brutalized and killed because they are Hindus.
Many of them have been forced from their ancestral homeland and now live in squalid camps.
Their future is uncertain.
I believe the Pandits are truly the forgotten people of Kashmir.
The State Department recently included a mention of the Pandits' plight in the annual ``country reports'' on human rights. That is at least a start--a recognition of a human rights problem.
We must not look the other way while Pandit people are killed, raped, abducted, brutalized and exiled. We must not accept the fact that they have been exiled in their own country.
We must pay attention to the plight of internally displaced people, a status that is becoming all too familiar in our new world.
I urge other Members to look below the surface of the conflict in Kashmir and focus on the human cost.
In the refugee camps there is a growing sense of unease, even panic, at the thought of being forgotten by the rest of the world.
As we have shown in Bosnia and other places, the United States is not the type of country that turns its back on people who are in dire straits.
That hope is what keeps the Kashmiri Pandits and other internally displaced people from lapsing into despair at their predicament.
They look to the West for the hope of a better future. We must not look the other way.
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