Provide them citizenship, travel documents
SRINAGAR, Mar 20: A few hundred Pakistani women married to Kashmiris who went to Pakistan for arms training after an armed conflict broke out in the region in 1989 and returned back to the Valley to live a peaceful life, especially after the Omar Abdullah-led government unveiled a policy for their return in 2010, are living a miserable life as neither they have been given citizenship rights not travel documents.
These women and their children can neither go back nor stay with their rights in Kashmir. For the past several years, they have been protesting in different parts of Kashmir to seek citizenship rights and travel documents to visit Pakistan, but nobody in the government is giving them a hearing.
According to media reports many such women in Kashmir are struggling to make the both ends meet and are facing immense mental trauma and agony. Recently, questions were also raised over participation of such women in DDC poll process and elections were canceled at two places where such women were contesting.
These women along with their children had been brought back by the government on a rehabilitation promise. But it is utterly shocking that all these years, these women and their children had to face only humiliation and mental agony.
Government of India should either should deport them or provide them with the travel documents so that they can visit their parents, siblings and relatives across the border. Also their children must be given travel documents so that if they want they could acquire education outside or work outside.
It is a humanitarian issue and must be looked from a humanitarian point of view. The 2010 promise of rehabilitation was all illusionary, but now time has come when the Government of India needs to take immediate decision over their plight.
