Kashmiris worst victim of Indian state terrorism: Masood Khan

“Since 1947, India’s killing spree in Kashmir has continued unabated. International community’s inaction provided the cover to India to commit crimes against humanity in IOK; most lethal weapon India is using against Kashmiris is traditional and public diplomacy by which it is systematically distorting facts to portray a false picture of the situation in Kashmir.”

Manchester: Terming October 27, 1947 as a black day in the history of Kashmir the president of Azad Kashmir Sardar Masood Ahmed Khan has said that India has been brutalising Kashmiri people since the day it landed its occupation forces in Srinagar.

The AJK President made these assertions while speaking to an event organised by the Consulate General of Manchester in the historic building of the British Heritage Centre here on Tuesday. “India sent the occupation forces to Kashmir against the backdrop of massacres and exodus of Muslims of Jammu”, he said adding that in those acts of genocide, Indian National Army, Dogra Army, terrorists of Rashtria Swayam Sevak (RSS), Maharajah of Kashmir, and the Jammu and Kashmir Prime Minister at that time, Mahar Chand Mahajan, were directly involved.

“They were war criminals by any definition”, he said. “In fact, the governments in New Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir masterminded and executed the genocide in which more than 237,000 Muslims were killed; some 27, 000 women were captured and subjected to predatory and sexual slavery; and half a million were forced to flee to Pakistan and Azad Kashmir”, the president said adding that it was Muslims’ holocaust, shortly after the holocaust during World War II. This was their ethnic cleansing much before the ethnic cleansing in the Balkans in the 1990s. “The crimes of the Hindu extremists are being brushed under the carpet by a systematic conspiracy of silence”, he said.

The President said that since 1947, India’s killing spree in Kashmir has continued unabated. The International inaction, he said, provided the cover to India to commit crimes against humanity in IOK.

He pointed out that since 1989, they have killed more than 100,000 Kashmiris, used rape as an instrument of war, and employed incarceration, forced disappearances, torture, encounter killings, and custodial killings to bludgeon Kashmiris to submission and enslavement. “By the use of pellet guns, they have completely blinded more than a hundred, mostly youth, put 1,000 at the risk of blinding, and injured more than 20,000”, the president maintained.

Khan said that despite India’s unbridled coercion, Kashmiris, after 70 years of bondage, say No to Indian writ and rule and demand freedom from occupation. India, he said, was changing demographic balance in Jammu and the Valley of Kashmir by giving permanent residence permits to non-Kashmiris and non-Muslims, leasing land to Indian industrialists, and constructing illegal settlements for Pandits and ex-Army personnel.

The most lethal weapon India was using against Kashmiris, he said, was traditional and public diplomacy by which it was systematically distorting facts and a false picture of the situation in Kashmir. “They project the unarmed and innocent Kashmiri civilians as terrorists, whereas the fact is that Indian state terrorists are killing Kashmiris. The Kashmiris have no means to defend themselves against Indian state terrorism”, he said.

The President urged the Diaspora community to raise the issue of Kashmir with there MPS, Foriegn and Commonwealth Office, and the British Prime Minister. The issue should be raised and discussed at the floor of the House of Commons. The people of Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir, as well as the Diaspora community, will demonstrate unity, internationalise the Kashmir issue, because the bilateral track had proved to be ineffective, leverage the strengths of the Diaspora community, use the media to tell the world about the true picture, and reach out to global civil society.