Ghost Prisoners

Recently I read a book called "Ghost Planes" by Stephen Grey [1]. It is a book about the true story of the CIA torture program. I was shocked to read about the torture that so many people around the world went through as a result of this rendition program. It is ugly. But here, I am not going into the details of the book. The reason I mentioned it is because it made me think. It made me think about those thousands of young kashmiri men who went missing in the last seventeen years.
These kashmiri men who disappeared have nothing to do with the CIA rendition program. Their crime: Being kashmiris who want to secede from India. Some of them might have been militants fighting for the independence from India, others just ordinary citizens who happen to live in the wrong place at the wrong time.
World was shocked to hear about one Mehar Arar [1], the canadian software engineer, sent to Syria during his transit at a US airport on way to Canada, where he was tortured for a year. Eventually he was released and Kashmir has lost thousands of Mehar Arar's never to return again and nobody is shocked. They left behind, half-widows, aging parents and orphan kids. They are seeking answers to their questions: Are the wives of these disappeared men, widows? Have these elderly parents lost their son? Are their kids, orphans? Nobody has an answer or may be people who know don't want to say it.
Many of these young men were innocent people. My question is even if all of them were militants, does the international or any ethical law permit their disappearance? Isn't it the moral responsibility of the Indian government to answer what happened to these young kashmiris.

Mohammad Nayeem

[1] Grey, Stephen. Ghost Plane, The true story of the CIA torture program. St. Martin's press, New York. 2006.