ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Saturday condemned India’s continued campaign of extrajudicial killings claiming lives of seven more innocent Kashmiris in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).
“It is deeply worrying that in the past one week, Indian forces have blatantly carried out a series of extrajudicial murders with impunity on a daily basis,” Foreign Office (FO) spokesperson Asim Iftikhar said.
He said that in one incident near Kupwara on September 25, two innocent Kashmiris were mercilessly killed by Indian occupation forces.
In another brutal encounter that occurred after a so-called ‘cordon and search’ operation in Kulgam district on September 26, one more innocent Kashmiri was killed in cold blood, he added. In yet another incident that took place in Kulgam district on September 27, he added, two more innocent Kashmiris were shot dead under the facade of a police encounter.
Even yesterday, two innocent Kashmiris were targeted and killed in a staged encounter in Baramulla, he added.
He stated that the stage-managed encounters enacted after every so-called ‘cordon and search’ operation and resulting in the extrajudicial killings of Kashmiris, openly desecrate the basic tenets of law and justice and defy the fundamental human rights and liberties of the innocent Kashmiri people.
Since its unilateral and illegal actions of August 5, 2019, Indian Occupation Forces have murdered more than 678 Kashmiris, including at least 158 this year.
“Pakistan reiterates its call for the investigation of extrajudicial killings in IIOJK by the Commission of Inquiry as recommended by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in its Kashmir Reports of 2018 and 2019,” he stated.
He added that Pakistan also urges the international community to hold India responsible for its brazen persecution of the innocent Kashmiris and play its due role in ensuring a just and peaceful resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir Dispute in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2022