Recently, a report released by US State Department on human rights violation in Indian held Kashmir, says that the Indian government and its agents have committed arbitrary killings including extrajudicial killing in Kashmir. The report about killings must come as a shock to all, for it reports no less than 1,600 unlawful executions by Indian security agencies in one year alone. If we consider the fact that the insurgency in the Kashmir valley has been going on since the late 1980s, the cumulative figure for arbitrary killings for more than two decades must be astounding. Besides illegal executions, the rights violations have ranged from arbitrary detentions and police firing on unarmed protesters to rape and murder. Since the normal law of the land has failed to deliver, the state legislature has authorised the government to declare any zone a disturbed area and armed the security forces with special powers, including the Public Safety Act. This is seen as a licence by the law-enforcement personnel, who can detain anyone against whom reasonable suspicion exists. Similarly, the PSA gives the police the right to detain any person without a judicial review for two years. The extent of torture, killings and rapes perpetrated on Kashmiri people by Indian forces are already creating a new record of atrocities. Gouging of eyes, cutting off of men's genitals, use of ever new methods of torture and endless curfews would shame Hitler's SS death squads. The Indian occupation army's deviltry such as burning of entire villages and crops, destruction of economic life of whole communities and genocide of the Kashmiri people in defiance of international human rights laws, are everyday affairs. MUZAMMIL MUJAHID BHATTI, Rawalpindi, April 13.