Altaf Hamid Rao
MUZAFFARABAD/ MIRPUR [AJK], : (Parliament Times) : The AJK President Sardar Masood Khan has said that Kashmir and the Kashmiris struggle for freedom and liberty are living realities and they cannot be pushed into the dustbin of history.
He was addressing a 27-member delegation of the National Defense University (NDU) which called on him here on Thursday under the leadership of Air Commodore Raja Waqar Ali. The delegation included officers of the Pakistan Army and the Pakistan Air Forces and the officers from 12 friendly countries including Bangladesh, Jordan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
The AJK president said that the defenseless Kashmiri people have only one weapon to fight and that is the slogan of “long live Pakistan”, and the same slogan has become their crime that warrants the death penalty but they are not ready to compromise on this slogan. The young Kashmiris after embracing martyrdom would like to be buried in a coffin wrapped with a Pakistani flag.
While apprising the delegation of the latest situation in Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the state president said that the people of the territory are still firm on their commitment which they had made on 19 July 1947 in Presence of Ghazi-e- Millat Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan that they would attach their political fate with the state of Pakistan.
He pointed out that the whole population of IOJK has been besieged in their homes since 5 August 2019 while some 13,000 to 14,000 youth languishing in prisons are being subjected to the worst inhuman torture, and all tricks are being applied to brainwash them in order to deter them from their demand for freedom and the right to self-determination.
Dispelling the impression Pakistan is doing little for the liberation of Kashmir, President Khan said that Pakistan had lost its half part for the freedom of Kashmir besides fighting six conventional and asymmetric wars, it has been fighting on the political and diplomatic fronts to liberate Kashmir from Indian slavery.
Since 1947, he said, India has been propagating a false narrative that it is fighting a war on terror in the part of Kashmir under its occupation. “No one is there to tell the international community that the terrorists come in uniforms from New Delhi and brutalize the people of Jammu and Kashmir,” he lamented.
Mr. Khan said that India had fabricated a myth back in 1947 that outsiders (Tribal) came to Kashmir and liberated a part of Kashmir and their interference in Kashmir prompted India to occupy a major part of the territory. Now they are telling the world that India is fighting terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir.
“Their narrative was false in 1947 and what they are telling the world today holds no truth,” he asserted adding that AJK and GB were liberated by the people of these regions.
Responding to a host of question from the members of the NDU delegation, the AJK president said that on the whole, the Kashmir cause had gained groundswell support on the international level since 5 August 2019 but some influential countries due to their political and economic interests are not ready to speak against India and support the Kashmiri people.
This, he added, exposes double standards of these countries on the one hand, while on the other, it indicates that the world order which had emerged after World War II with the United Nations as its face has about to collapse.