ISLAMABAD: (Parliament Times) Sardar Masood Khan, President Azad Jammu and Kashmir, said that the United Nations has recognized the just and inalienable right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people, He said that the Kashmiri struggle will continue till they are free from the shackles of the Indian Occupation forces.
President AJK said that the people of Kashmir and Pakistan would attain IOK’s freedom by closing their ranks, by taking the Kashmir Issue to the international community, by leveraging the strengths of our diaspora and media, and by making Pakistan and AJK stronger.
The President made these remarks while addressing a seminar on the “Students’ role in achieving the Kashmiris Right to Self-Determination” organized by the Kashmir Students Federation at the Federal Urdu University here in Islamabad.
President Azad Kashmir said that India claims that Kashmir is a forgotten issue, but it is not. Everyday Kashmiris are sacrificing their lives and paying for their freedom with their blood, he said. The Indian government, he said, has tried to demonize the struggle of the innocent Kashmiris as acts of terrorism and is presenting itself as a victim. Despite brutal coercion, economic inducements, political manipulations, India has not succeeded in winning the hearts and minds of the Kashmiris in the past 70 years; nor will it ever succeed in doing so.
The President said that in the Indian Occupied Kashmir there were two types of terrorism; state terrorism perpetrated by the 700,000 occupation forces and acts of terror committed by the RSS extremists. “The Kashmiris freedom struggle is political and diplomatic, first and last”, he said. He said that India is attempting to remove Kashmiris from the Kashmir issue, adding that the Kashmir issue was a tri-partite issue between India, Pakistan and the people of Jammu and Kashmir and Kashmiris were in fact the key constituents who had to decide about their political future.
President AJK said that India is propagating a false narrative by claiming that the Kashmir dispute is a bilateral issue between Pakistan and India. This, he said, is a negation of the UN resolutions which clearly state that the Kashmiris have the right to a free and fair plebiscite to exercise their right to self-determination.
President Masood Khan said that after the martyrdom of Burhan Wani, India unleashed brute force on the Kashmiris and openly murdered civilians, maimed thousands of protestors with pellet guns, dishonored women folk and has used malicious tactics to transform the demography of Muslim populated areas.
Addressing the participants, the President said the people and leadership of Jammu and Kashmir had made a conscious decision to accede to Pakistan on 19th July, 1947 at the resident of Ghazi-e-Millat Sardar Ibrahim Khan, the founder President of Azad Kashmir. He said it was our duty to be the faithful custodians of the vision and aspirations of our leadership and the people of Jammu and Kashmir by continuing our efforts for a just resolution of this issue. “We will not compromise on our just right to self-determination”, he said.
India along with the Dogra forces and RSS extremists had massacred over 237,000 unarmed Kashmiris and forced another 500,000 Kashmiris to migrate out of Jammu and Kashmir, said the President. He added that this was the first instance of ethnic genocide post World War II.
The President said that India has stationed over 700,000 armed military personnel in IOK, which is the largest concentration of occupation army in any conflict zone of the world. India is using brutality and enticing economic deals to subdue the freedom struggle but this in no way has suppressed the quest of the Kashmiris for freedom from the occupation forces.
President AJK said that in a recent article, Palaniappan Chidambaram, Member of Rajya Sabha and former Indian Finance Minister has acknowledged the issue as “a long-pending dispute of accession”, and slammed the Modi government’s “hard, muscular and militaristic” approach in IOK. Chidambaram had also said that militancy was a consequence and not the cause of the freedom movement in IOK; and hence advised India to adopt a political approach involving all stakeholders and reduce the presence of Indian Army and para-military forces in the IOK.
Highlighting the initiatives taken in AJK, President Masood Khan said that Azad Kashmir is going through a new phase of economic development which would turn the region into an economic engine. He said that the AJK Government is focusing on infrastructure development, hydropower generation, education, tourism, industrial growth, extractive industry and agriculture. Under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, he said, four exclusive projects have been identified for AJK which include the Karot Hydro Power Project, Kohala Hydro Power Project, Mansehra-Mirpur Expressway and a state of the art Industrial Zone in Mirpur.
He said that today AJK’s overall education score is more than 85% which makes it the most literate region in the whole of Pakistan. It has also outcompeted other regions in student enrolment, retention, learning and gender parity, he said. He added that AJK now has five universities, three medical colleges, two cadet colleges and scores of post-graduate colleges. After achieving the quantitative goals, our government now focuses on improving quality of education and will introduce specialized disciplines to cater to the emerging job markets, said the President.
The President said that the people of Pakistan and AJK will not fall victim to the Indian propaganda aimed at creating disunity among our ranks. By the grace of Allah, all our political parties are unified on the Kashmir issue and stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Kashmir. He said, Quaid-e-Azam had rightly called Kashmir as the jugular vein of Pakistan as all our rivers flow through Kashmir, the destinies of our people are intertwined and now CPEC also passes through Gilgit-Baltistan and AJK. Today due its illegal occupation of IOK, India claims to be the upper riparian state and threatens to ‘dry up’ Pakistan by diverting the rivers flowing into Pakistan from Kashmir. “We will not allow that to happen”, he said.
The President reiterated that in today’s world the youth are global citizens who have access to social media platforms and can positively project the Kashmir cause to their peers and the global civil society.
The event was attended by Senator Raja Zafar-ul-Haq, Ghulam Muhammad Saffi, Faiz Naqshbandi, Abdul Hameed Lone, senior members of the APHC, university faculty and a large number of students.