MIRPUR: Azad Jammu Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan Thursday said that India’s appeasement by major powers, in the aftermath of the invasion, siege and colonization of the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir on August 5 this year, was reminiscent of the 1938 Munich Agreement when Western powers acquiesced to Hitler’s land grab in Czechoslovakia and later of Poland.
“At that time they endorsed Hitler’s claim that this was an internal matter”, Masood said while speaking at the Centre of Excellence (Faizan-i-Islam) in Waltham Forest Area of London, said an official message released to the media by AJK Presidential Secretariat.
This appeasement, he said, led to a devastating war, genocide and pogrom and added that the situation in IOJK was not much different.
The reception was hosted by Sheikh Ghulam Rabbani and attended by local MPs, Councilors, lawyers and representatives of civil society.
President Masood Khan said that the people of London cannot fully visualise the pain and suffering the people of IOJK, where the entire population was besieged in their own homes and homeland, where thousands of youth had been abducted by the occupation forces and were being tortured in prison houses, where entire political leadership was behind bars, where women were being molested and raped, and where the entire territory had become an economic wasteland.
The president said that what kind of mockery was it that the puppet Governor of the occupied territory and his masters sitting in Delhi were saying that the situation in IOJK was “normal’. It was a jailer’s definition of normal situation with the difference that in this mass prison, innocent, unarmed people were being incarcerated and brutalised as a nation.
“This was India’s new normal”. Let the people of Kashmir say the situation is normal, and they would say that only when their fundamental rights, including the right to self-determination, have been restored.
Sardar Masood Khan thanked the UK Parliament for holding a debate on Jammu and Kashmir after the illegal steps taken by India on August 5; and the Labour Party for adopting a strong resolution on Kashmir. In this regard, he especially acknowledged and applauded the role of the Kashmiri and Pakistani diaspora community in the UK which had influenced public opinion inside and outside the Parliament through effective lobbying, vigils, rallies, processions, demonstrations, and conferences.
“Your voice had an impact and it will continue to have its resonance in the UK, Europe and across the Atlantic,” he said.
The president said that while the international media and human rights organisations have been clamouring for end to India’s repression in IOJK, the UN Security Council has been issuing infrequent bland statements, neglecting its fundamental obligation to protect the people of Jammu and Kashmir from genocide and the region from the scourge of a looming war. “This is dereliction of duty”, he said.
Underlining the need for taking practical steps, the President said: “Don’t let the story (of Kashmir) die and don’t let them (Indians) change the story.”
“If you cage people, there will be reaction. If the coercion is violent, it will beget self-defensive “violence”, in however rudimentary form and no matter how unarmed the people are, he said adding that that civil disobedience is the ultimate self-punitive weapon that people use against oppressive colonial masters. Kashmiris under siege had started their economic boycott of the oppressor by withholding their produce of apples and walnuts.
President Masood Khan reminded his audience that this war in Kashmir was not between Pakistan and India or between Muslims and Hindus; it was a war between humanity and inhumanity, between humanitarianism and fascism.
He said: Indian violent extremist political parties and fascist organisations are threatening South Asian Muslims with annihilation. “Help us turn this tide, and help us prevent a nuclear war in the region”.
Acknowledging that the UK was now preoccupied with Brexit, the president observed that for London, Brussels, New York, Washington, Beijing and Moscow, it was still “elephant in the room”. The human rights catastrophe in Kashmir must be addressed; it is a global responsibly, because Kashmir is burning and it is the most serious crisis on the face of the earth.
The AJK president appealed to the diaspora community and their freedom loving friends to be proactive in generating communications to the Parliament, Government, UN and the media about the deteriorating human rights situation in IOJK.
Unity, he said, is not unanimity, and therefore various organisations with diverse outlook should aim to form a “coalition of common interests” and close their ranks to frustrate Indian designs to drive a wedge between Pakistan and the people of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan is behind Jammu and Kashmir like a solid rock.
Kashmiris too are united and would valiantly continue to face down India’s campaign of terror in Jammu and Kashmir, he added.
The president paid rich tribute to the Kashmir leadership and people for their heroic struggle to oppose and defeat the fresh wave of India’s state terrorism in IOJK.
