New York (PID, AJK) President Azad Jammu and Kashmir Barrister Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry has said that the international community should play its much needed role to help-resolve the lingering Kashmir dispute that happens to be the main cause and consequence of bloodshed and human rights violations in the region.
He said this while addressing a special meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) at the United Nations here in New York today. The OIC Secretary General Hussain Ibrahim Taha, Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Nigeria and other Islamic countries also participated in the meeting.
Speaking on the occasion, the president said that the OIC has always supported the Kashmiris’ just cause and condemned the human rights violations being committed by the Indian forces in Kashmir. “Even today, when I come to the meeting of the OIC-Kashmir Contact Group here at the United Nations, I am burdened by the expectations of one and a half million Kashmiri people who want that the member countries of the forum (OIC) should move beyond the political rhetoric, come forward in a big way and openly express their support for Kashmiris’ legitimate right, the right of self-determination”, Barrister Chaudhary said.
He said that the Kashmiri people in Occupied Kashmir were currently going through a serious and alarming situation. In the aftermath of August 5, 2019, the president said that India has started large-scale changes in Occupied Kashmir and at the same time has increased the violation of human rights.
Under the given circumstances, the president said that there was a dire need that the international community, especially the OIC should openly support the Kashmiri people and use its influence to stop the ongoing atrocities in Occupied Kashmir.
Highlighting the India’s nefarious designs aimed at changing the region’s demography, Barrister Chaudhary said that India has issued fake domiciles to more than 42 million non-state Hindus to change the population ratio in Occupied Kashmir.
Referring to delimitation of constituencies, he said that the BJP government was changing the entire electoral landscape of the region in order to install a Hindu Chief Minister in the state. Similarly, he said, Hurriyat leaders have been arrested and left to rot behind the bars.
He also raised the unjust sentencing of prominent Kashmiri leader Yasin Malik and termed it as a judicial onslaught to suppress legitimate Kashmiri voices.
Regarding the massive troops’ concentration in the region, he said that the occupied Kashmir happens to be the world’s largest militarized zone where the soldier to civilian ratio is 1:8 (one soldier for eight civilians).
He also underlined the extra-judicial killings of Kashmiri youth by Indian forces in fake encounters. He said that on the one hand Kashmiris are being killed in fake encounters while on the other innocent civilians including men, women and children were being blinded by using pellet guns.
He said that rape of women was being used as a weapon war by India against Kashmiris.
He said that the world should put pressure on India to stop the ongoing atrocities in Occupied Kashmir. On this occasion, the OIC’s Kashmir Contact Group issued a joint declaration expressing solidarity with the Kashmiri people and condemning the violation of human rights in Occupied Kashmir.
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