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India’s Political Trials in Kashmir and the Asiya Andrabi Verdict
WOLAS expresses grave concern regarding the continued detention of Kashmiri political prisoners languishing in Indian prisons, especially the sentencing of female political prisoner Asiya Andrabi, 64, Head of Dukhtaran Millat, to life imprisonment. Her associates, Nahida Nasreen and Sofi Fehmeeda, received 30 years’ imprisonment each in the same case today by India courts. The so-called terror charges under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act for political resistance against the UN-guaranteed right to self-determination for Jammu and Kashmir echo that India seeks to annul its own commitments initiated before the United Nations Security Council.
Over these decades, the Indian occupying army and its de facto occupational machinery in the occupied territory have exercised wide impunity to perpetrate heinous war crimes. In this context, legal frameworks are being systematically instrumentalised as instruments of repression against Kashmiris, including political activists, award-winning human rights defenders, lawyers, and other professionals, to silence them and normalise ongoing demographic change and settler violence in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.
Legislative and administrative measures implemented in recent years, coupled with patterns of displacement and repression, indicate a systematic transformation of the region’s demographic and political character. These measures do not operate outside the law; rather, they reflect a reconfiguration of legality itself, where legal form is deployed to institutionalise dispossession and legislate Kashmir out of existence.
The erroneous orders and politically motivated judgments, imposed through sweeping legal frameworks, give rise to serious concerns under international humanitarian and human rights law. Prolonged pre-trial detention, denial of due process, and the imposition of life sentences amounting to incarceration until natural death require urgent international legal scrutiny, particularly in light of obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), including protections against arbitrary detention and the right to a fair trial.
The aspiration of India claiming a “motherland” parallel with Israel cannot be fulfilled through the use of an Israel-style playbook in Indian-occupied Kashmir. WOLAS condemns these politically motivated judgments, particularly against women, who constitute a vulnerable group.
WOLAS emphasises the legal imperative of pursuing these matters through available international legal and institutional forums. This includes engagement with United Nations human rights mechanisms, special procedures, treaty bodies, and other accountability frameworks capable of addressing patterns of arbitrary detention, political repression, and structural rights violations, despite longstanding UN resolutions affirming the right to self-determination.
WOLAS calls upon the international community, legal practitioners, and human rights institutions to intensify monitoring, documentation, and legal action concerning the situation of Kashmiri political prisoners and the broader policies affecting the occupied region.
The international community cannot ignore patterns of structural erasure and collective harm against marginalised communities who have been promised self-determination by the United Nations through multiple resolutions.
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