IIOJK: AJK President for transforming liberation movement into int'l resistance drive

ISLAMABAD: President Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Sardar Masood Khan has stressed the need for transforming the ongoing liberation movement in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K) into an international resistance campaign by mobilizing global community for initiating boycott, divestment and sanctions against India.

Speaking at the international Kashmir Convention, organized by the World Kashmir Forum (WKF) here on Tuesday, the AJK president 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. He said that it is high time that 220 million people of Pakistan and the AJK come out in support of oppressed Kashmiri people, adding that people of the occupied valley were faced with the conditions like that of Poland after the World War-II and Balkan after the Balkan war of 1990.

Khan said that India has been busy in the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri people and committing war crimes against them, adding that occupied Kashmir is the only region in the whole world, whose people 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 that hundreds of thousands of Indian citizens were being settled down on the lands of the Kashmiris, and the youth are being killed and disabled on a daily basis, while the modesty of the Kashmiri women is being outraged.

He regretted the attitude of some people with regard to the Kashmir issue, adding that people of Pakistan and the AJK will have to unite and hammer out a new strategy to muster decisive support of the international community on the Kashmir issue. Under chapters VI and VII of the UN Charter, he added India can be held accountable for its crimes.

"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 against India," the AJK president underscored.

About bilateralism on Kashmir, he said that Kashmir was not a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan rather it was an international dispute. "The dialogue on Kashmir should be trilateral with the participation of Kashmiri representative and under the supervision of the United Nations," he added.

Chairman Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir Shehryar Khan Afridi said that Indian colonial designs and expansionist agenda was a major threat to regional and global peace and development. "Kashmiri people should be given the right to a free and transparent plebiscite whether they want to live with Pakistan or India," he added. "Pakistan and India may head to a nuclear war if Kashmir dispute is not amicably resolved," he said, while referring to statement by top British General Sir Nick Carter, who stated that "the threat of 3rd World War is real".

He further said that the government was devising a comprehensive strategy to internationalize the Kashmir cause, adding that all the political parties were on the same page on the two issues - Pakistan's nuclear programme and Kashmir. WKF Chairman Haji Mohammad Rafiq Pardesi said that plight of Kashmiris were giving us sleepless nights, and called for responsible and prudent steps to end miseries of Kashmiris.

Former Defense Minister Lt Gen Naeem Khalid Lodhi (retd), former Attorney General of Pakistan Anwar Mansoor Khan, former ambassadors, Abdul Basit and Javeed Hafeez, and Chairperson Jammu and Kashmir Solidarity Movement Uzma Gul were among those who addressed the event.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020