Stockholm: President of Azad Jammu and Kashmir Sardar Masood Khan on Friday urged the Swedish Parliament to take notice of serious human rights violations and crimes against humanity being committed by the Indian occupation forces in the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir
Khan made these remarks during his interaction with Swedish Foreign Affairs Committee members here on Friday. The President while giving a detailed account of killings, arbitrary detentions, torture, custodial killings, disappearances and molestation of women by occupation forces asked the committee to send a fact-finding mission to IOK to ascertain and establish the horrors that Kashmiris were being subjected to every day.
“Today, the Indian Occupied Kashmir is a dark place cordoned off from the rest of the world where 13 million people were colonised and brutalised”, Sardar Masood Khan said.
The President also appealed to the international community to help stop Indian atrocities across the line of control, which had already claimed 20 lives and seriously injuring 75 persons during the first two months of 2018 by violating the 2003 ceasefire agreement. He also highlighted how Pakistan was showing restraint in the face of these provocations. “This deliberate escalation by India must be stopped”, he said.
The President has urged the leadership of Swedish Parliament and Government to raise the issues of human rights violations in Occupied Kashmir during Indian Prime Minister’s upcoming visit to Stockholm in April this year.
“The international community”, he said, “should hold India accountable for its horrendous crimes of blinding, rape, and genocide in Kashmir being committed with impunity”.
Serken Kose, who especially focuses on human rights, said that the Committee on Foreign Affairs monitors violations of human rights throughout the world and works for the promotion and protection of human rights. The Committee, he said, was aware of human rights situation in the Indian Held Kashmir. Serken Kose said that the Social Democratic members send communications to the governments of the countries where serious human rights violations are taking place.
Later, Pakistan’s Ambassador Ahmad Hussain Dayo hosted a dinner in honour of the President which was attended by prominent community leaders.
The AJK president also visited the Swedish Parliament, met members of the Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs and had a brief encounter and conversation with the Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Löfven.