President Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJ&K), Sardar Masood Khan has urged the global community, especially British government, to play role in addressing the serious humanitarian crisis and preventing the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri people in the Indian-held Kashmir (IHK). Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday along with a five-member UK parliamentary delegation, Masood said that being a permanent member of the UN Security Council, it is the moral obligation of the UK to take cognizance of the worst human rights abuses and the carnage of innocent Kashmiri people at the hands of Indian forces in occupied Kashmir.
The UK parliamentary delegation led by Labor Party MP Khalid Mahmood is currently holding meeting with various political parties and the government officials in Pakistan. Speaking on the occasion, MP Khalid Mahmood, MP Imran Hussain and MP Stephen Timms said that India is indulging in the worst human rights violations in occupied Kashmir. Mahmood said the people of Kashmir have been waging a struggle for their right to self-determination over the last seventy years. The UK MPs urged the UN Security Council to adopt a categorical stance on the situation of Indian occupied Kashmir, and declare the Indian actions on Kashmir as unlawful.
British MP Imran Hussain, in his remarks, said the UNSC and the international community have a huge role to play for the resolution of Kashmir dispute. "The situation prevailing in occupied Kashmir should be a matter of concern for the world community," he said. "The question arises if East Timor and South Sudan can get independence then why Kashmiris cannot?" he said, adding that he will also raise the plight of Kashmir people at the upcoming session of the British parliament
The AJK president said that on the whole the UK's role in the recent UN Security Council meeting on Kashmir was satisfactory, but the people of Jammu and Kashmir expect the UK to play a more active role to bring improvement in the situation of occupied Kashmir. Masood thanked the Labor Party chief Jeremy Corbyn and the all-party parliamentary Kashmir Group in the UK parliament for expressing grave concern over human rights violations in occupied Kashmir and said that the international community would have to take serious notice of genocide and war crimes against the Kashmiri people.
Masood said that more than 10,000 Kashmiri people including a large number of children have been arrested since August 5, and they have been shifted to prisons outside occupied Kashmir in New Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, and other Indian cities. "The constant curfew has created a starvation-like situation in occupied Kashmir, and the Indian troops are torching grain stocks, while milk is not available to infants," he added. The AJK president said, "We consider India's aggression against occupied Kashmir as aggression against Pakistan, and warn if India carries out a direct attack on Azad Kashmir, it would get a befitting response."
Supporting the call of veteran Kashmiri leader Syed Ali Gilani, Sardar Masood Khan said that the government employees and the police personnel of held valley should also join the liberation struggle because the struggle against India has now become a matter of life and death, and has entered into the stage of now or never. He said India is engaged in the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri people in a bid to change the demography of Kashmir. "This is a naked violation of international laws and the UN resolutions, and this cannot be ignored by declaring it a bilateral issue between Pakistan and India or an internal matter of India," he added.