ISLAMABAD, (Parliament Times) : The Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan has said that the people of occupied Kashmir are heroically fighting the Indian imperialism by considering their struggle as a matter of their life and death, and it is high time that 220 million people of Pakistan and AJK come out in support of them.
Addressing a function organized by the World Kashmir Forum here on Tuesday, he said that people of Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir were faced with the conditions like that of Poland after the World War-II and Balkan after the Balkan war of 1990.
He said that India has been busy in the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri people and committing war crimes against them. “Occupied Kashmir is the only region in the whole world, whose inhabitants are being denied the rights to life, education and health, and their lands are being grabbed and they are being turned into a minority in their own homeland,” he added.
The state president lamented that hundreds of thousands of Indian citizens were being settled on the lands of the Kashmiris, and the youth are being killed and disabled on daily basis, while the modesty of the Kashmiri women is being outranged.
“The people of occupied Kashmir are part of our body because they consider themselves to be Pakistanis, and they want to accede to Pakistan,” he said adding that the people of Kashmir were thankful to Pakistan for supporting their stand, repeatedly raising the Kashmir issue in the UN Security Council, activate the international civil society and media, and exposing India’s black face to the world.
He, however, regretted the attitude of some people and stressed that all of us will have to unite and hammer out a new strategy to muster decisive support of the international community on the Kashmiri issue.
He maintained that under chapters VI and VII of the UN Charter, India can be held accountable for its crimes, and to activate the UN Security Council on the Kashmir issue, we would have to transform the ongoing liberation movement into an international resistance campaign and would have to mobilize the international community for initiating boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against India.
Touching upon bilateral talks with India, Khan said Kashmir was not a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan rather it an international dispute. He said the dialogue on Kashmir should be trilateral with the participation of Kashmiri representative and under the supervision of the United Nations.
In his speech, Chairman Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir, Shehryar Khan Afridi Tuesday warned that Indian colonial designs and occupational and expansionist agenda was a major threat to regional and global peace and development.
He said that the people of Jammu and Kashmir would decide through a free and transparent plebiscite whether they want to live with Pakistan or India. Referring to the statement of the United Kingdom military chief General Sir Nick Carter that the threat of 3rd World War is real, Afridi said: “Pakistan and India may head to a nuclear war if Kashmir dispute is not amicably resolved.”
“The UN and the world need to immediately take practical steps to resolve Kashmir dispute to help avoid a nuclear war in the region where three nuclear neighbours – Pakistan, India and China are involved in border disputes,” he said. Afridi said Pakistan and India have fought three all-out wars beside two limited wars on Kashmir.
He called upon the UN experts on human rights and freedom of expression to make an immediate intervention into the Indian government’s illegal transfer of 2.4 lakh kanals of land in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) to Industries and Commerce Divisions of India.
The function was also addressed among others, by former Defense Minister Lt. Gen. (retd) Naeem Khalid Lodhi, former Attorney General of Pakistan Anwar Mansoor Khan, former Ambassadors Abdul Basit and Javeed Hafeez, Chairperson Jammu and Kashmir Solidarity Movement Uzma Gul and the WKF Chief Haji Mohammad Rafiq Pardeshi.
