In a statement issued to news agency Kashmir News Service (KNS), the KPSS said a new threat letter dated August 23, purportedly issued by the United Liberation Council (ULC)—a group suspected to be a Lashkar-e-Taiba-linked proxy—had surfaced on social media carrying names and personal details of Kashmiri Pandit employees. Security agencies are understood to be examining the authenticity and origin of the communication.

 

The organization noted that while the medium of intimidation had changed from posters and loudspeakers in the 1990s to digital platforms today, the psychological objective remained the same: to make a Kashmiri Pandit feel that his presence in the Valley is temporary and conditional.

 

"The right to remember one's home cannot be criminalised. The right to return cannot be portrayed as provocation. And the right to live without fear cannot be reduced to a request for sympathy," the KPSS said.

 

In an apparent reference to recent remarks attributed to BJP General Secretary (Organisation), J&K, Ashok Koul, who was reported as saying that "targeted killings won't stop" while emphasising the need to build brotherhood, the KPSS questioned what security meant if the possibility of violence was accepted as a continuing feature.

 

"If targeted killings are spoken of as something that 'won't stop', what exactly is being promised to the families who are being encouraged to return?Click Here To Follow Our WhatsApp Channel" the statement asked.

 

"Brotherhood is unquestionably valuable. Social harmony is indispensable. But brotherhood cannot become a substitute for protection; sentiment cannot substitute for security; assurances cannot substitute for intelligence; and appeals to harmony cannot substitute for accountability."

 

The KPSS posed a pointed question: "How many times must the victim prove his commitment to Kashmir before Kashmir proves its commitment to him?"

 

It asserted that the real test of a society was not how loudly it mourned after a killing but whether it recognised the warning before the killing. "The real test is not whether people gather for the last rites of a member of a minority community. The real test is whether that member can live, work, worship, own property and return to his ancestral home without society first having to gather around his funeral pyre to rediscover his humanity."

 

The organization also cautioned against dismissing the threat as merely a poster, pointing out that essential security questions remained: who prepared it, who circulated it, how were personal details obtained, and whether any local facilitation or network was involved.

 

The KPSS in a statement demanded that threats be investigated, security guaranteed, personal information protected, ancestral property rights safeguarded, and the right to return be made a matter of security and justice—not courage and chance.

 

"The Valley cannot convincingly claim to have turned the page while continuing to encounter the same chapter whenever a Kashmiri Pandit is threatened," it said. (KNS)