MIRPUR: Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan on Sunday said emphatically that the reports prepared by the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) must be presented to all UN Security Council members so that India is brought to task for human rights abuses being committed in Indian occupied Kashmir (IOK) and across the Line of Control (LoC) in AJK.
The president made these remarks while chairing the AJK All Parties Conference (APC) hosted by AJK Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider Khan here in Muzaffarabad.
The AJK president said on the occasion that the participation of all political parties in the APC, along with the representatives of All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), was vital in displaying our unified stand on the issue of Kashmir.
He paid rich tributes to the people of IOK, who were being subjected to severe human rights violations perpetrated by the Indian occupation forces. He condemned the recent wave of violence in Shopian that led to the martyrdom of over 20 innocent Kashmiris. He said these killings were not sporadic or a one-off event, but rather, the heavily armed Indian forces killed innocent Kashmiris on a daily basis with impunity.
The AJK president further said that Pakistan was the only sovereign country that was fighting for the rights of the Kashmiri people and providing continuous political, moral and diplomatic to the just freedom struggle.
He said that Pakistan supported the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination, adding that India had always created hurdles and used delaying tactics to avoid holding a plebiscite in the valley.
India had been using high-handed tactics in the valley with the help of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) goons and their village defence committees to unceasingly threaten Kashmiris into leaving their homes and giving up their freedom struggle, all the while avoiding talking to Hurriyat leaders and Pakistan over the Kashmir issue, he added.
He also said that the holding of bilateral talks in this connection was a hoax which India had used to buy time and maintain a status quo in Kashmir. He said that India wanted to exclude Kashmiris from the dialogue process, which was incomprehensible as Kashmiris were the main stakeholders in the dispute and arriving at a viable solution without their political consent was impossible.
Moreover, the AJK president said that India was trying to punish Pakistan for providing support to Kashmiris by unleashing a three-pronged war against Pakistan through tactics that include unleashing terror on our Kashmiri brothers and sisters in IOK, targeting of civilians across the LOC, India’s support for a systematic proxy war aimed at destabilising Pakistan by abetting and sponsoring terrorist activities in FATA, Balochistan province, Karachi and other cities of the country.
He said that the people of Pakistan have never compromised on its Kashmir policy nor
would Pakistan’s strategy on Kashmir be allowed to change. Pakistan considered Kashmiris as their own citizens, he added. He also said that after the Shopian incident, people in Pakistan and AJK came together and raised a unified voice against Indian atrocities in the valley.
A joint resolution was endorsed by the participants calling for a unified stance on Kashmir, re-strategising efforts for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute, chalking out plans for organising an APC at the national level and organising an international parliamentary conference on Kashmir in Muzaffarabad.
The APC was attended by former AJK Presidents Major General (r) Muhammad Anwar Khan and Raja Zulqarnain, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) AJK chapter president, Jamaat-e-Islami’s MLA Abdur Rasheed Turabi, leaders from Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, Muslim Conference and Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam, along with leaders from APHC, including Ghulam Muhammad Safi and Faiz Naqashbandi.
