After three days of the Red Fort car blast in India’s capital, New Delhi, the counterinsurgency forces in Jammu and Kashmir detonated the house of the elderly father of the alleged accused, Dr Umar Nabi, in South Kashmir – a region under prolonged military occupation.

Alongside Palestine, Kashmir represents one of the longest-standing cases of unlawful military occupation where the right to self-determination, enshrined in the UN Charter and affirmed by multiple Security Council resolutions, remains structurally denied.

The Gaza-pattern bombing of civilian properties in Kashmir is not a novel feature of Indian military operations. Instead, India is erasing the visibility of war crimes by reclassifying the international armed conflict over the disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir as a matter of internal security.

This strategic domesticisation facilitates India’s evasion of accountability under international criminal law for ‘atrocity crimes’ committed against a protected civilian population in Kashmir.

Escalating repression

Since India unilaterally revoked the semi-autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019 and illegally annexed the territory in defiance of binding UN Security Council resolutions, the Kashmiri population has been subjected to escalating repression. Arbitrary detentions, communication blackouts, and a suffocating politics of fear have become instruments of governance.

Dissent now risks not only imprisonment but also the demolition of family homes and property confiscation under draconian laws like the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), which criminalises political expression.

Erasure of humanitarian laws

The systematic denial of international humanitarian law (IHL) protections in Indian-administered Kashmir has severely undermined the legitimacy and legal framing of its freedom struggle. IHL, unlike other domains of international law, offers precise, codified protections, especially in contexts of military occupation and civilian vulnerability.

Its selective suspension in Kashmir has enabled India to reframe an internationally recognised occupation into an internal law-and-order issue, allowing it to bypass the legal obligations arising under the Geneva Conventions.

Without an explicit international acknowledgement of Kashmir as a situation of occupation governed by IHL, India has constructed an alternative narrative rooted in national sovereignty, thereby shielding its conduct from international legal scrutiny.

Between 2020 and 2024, civil society........

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