For the last 46 years, the Kashmiris have been demanding their United Nations-endorsed right to self-determination and have been struggling for freedom from Indian rule.

India claims that Kashmir is an integral part of India and sees the conflict as a secessionist movement led by Islamic fundamentalists, aided by outside forces. All of this to justify a brutal hold on the Kashmiri people.

Since 1989, over 30,000 have been killed and many more wounded by the more than 500,000 Indian soldiers stationed in Kashmir, a state that should have been transferred to Pakistan under the 1947 division of the Indian subcontinent.

The government of India has undermined Kashmir's major institutions, resulting in a breakdown of social order. Health care has been hard hit. Agriculture and industry have virtually ceased. Places of worship have been desecrated and destroyed. Any Kashmiri can be arrested and detained for up to two years without being charged or brought to trial. Brutal torture during interrogation is common.

In a dimly-lit, overcrowded ward inside the Children's Hospital in Srinagar, a physician stood over a boy dying of spinal meningitis. "Just think," he said, "a country claiming to be the world's largest democracy barring the International Red Cross from visiting Kashmir. Imagine, a country founded on the principals of Ghandi guilty of withholding life-saving medicine."

-Martin A. Sugarman