Another instrument of governance routinely used by Pakistan is torture where members of intelligence, paramilitary, and military can torture or mistreat citizens with impunity without fear of being prosecuted or disciplined. HRW has documented several cases where Pakistani officials have institutionally discriminated against linguistically and culturally distinct refugees and secular nationalists or militants from India through constant surveillance, curbs of political _expression, arbitrary arrest, and beatings. By pretending “the only problems faced by Kashmiris are in India ,” the Pakistani Government tries to deflect attention away from “human rights abuses in” ‘Azad’ Kashmir .

HRW wants the international community pouring in billions of dollars for urgently needed relief and reconstruction aid for earthquake victims in ‘Azad’ Kashmir , to demand structural changes in governance and promotion of both human rights and the rule of law. Several senior government officials have been recently accused and implicated on corruption charges displaying serious weaknesses in the rule of law and governmental accountability. It wants the Pakistani government to “ensure that the people of ‘Azad’ Kashmir can exercise their fundamental civil and political rights in an environment free of coercion and fear.”

The other aspect of this report is that it has confirmed Indian assertion that Pakistan continues to follow a policy of infiltrating terrorists into India . The HRW says that while “Most of those interviewed were of the view that though the level of infiltration had decreased substantially since 2004, there have been no indications that the Pakistani military or militant groups had decided to abandon infiltration as policy.” The military apparently continued to maintain close relationship with militant groups and even used last year’s earthquake as an “opportunity to craft a new image for the militant groups rather than as an opportunity to disband them.”

In a separate report, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) accused the government of deliberately not defining the constitutional status of the so-called Northern Areas (NA) as part of its strategy to divide and control the population of the areas it illegally occupies. In its report “A strong yearning for autonomy,” HRCP says that though the people of the NA want to be integrated into Pakistan as a fifth province, officials want their status indeterminately obscure so that they can influence the outcome of an UN-sponsored plebiscite, “if and when” that happens. The thinking in the government is if the NA is integrated into Pakistan , it would have lost a key leverage in case of a plebiscite.

After intense criticism that Pakistan is treating NA as a colony, the Pakistani Government introduced a Legal Framework Order (LFO) in 1994 that “did not guarantee fundamental rights (as under the Pakistani constitution) and a judiciary to enforce them.” While there “is an elected NA Council,” it has no real legislative authority” as “the chief executive (CE) of the area is the Kashmir and Northern Areas Affairs (KANA) minister who resides in Islamabad.” While there is a locally elected deputy, that position “has no executive authority and it is only the CE who picks the ministers.” Worse, members of the NA Council cannot even meet the CE.

The Pakistan Government has rejected both these reports claiming that they were “factually incorrect” and “biased.”