Mirwaiz hopes CBMs to help resolve Kashmir dispute

Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - Srinagar—In occupied Kashmir, the Chairman of All Parties Hurriyet Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq has expressed the hope that the Confidence Building Measures between Pakistan and India will create a conducive atmosphere for resolving the Kashmir dispute, once and for all. The APHC Chairman while addressing media men in Srinagar, today, announced the decisions taken by the Executive and General Councils of the forum in their sessions yesterday and today. He maintained that the APHC supported resolution of the Kashmir dispute through talks but the Kashmiri leadership needed to be incorporated in the process. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said that the Hurriyet leaders could not ignore the people’s day-to-day problems and would try to address these, as well. He pointed out that the APHC would be made more dynamic and different committees would be set up very soon for mass contact and to address the human rights problems of the people as well as the legal issues faced by Hurriyet leaders and activists. On the other hand, the spokesman of the forum patronised by the veteran Kashmiri Hurriyet leader, Syed Ali Gilani, in a statement issued in Srinagar said that Swami Shankaracharya Adhok Shjanand during a meeting with the veteran leader, maintained that some forces in India didn’t want settlement of the Kashmir dispute. Indian troops, in their fresh act of state terrorism, martyred one Kashmiri youth at Akhal in Kangan area of Ganderbal, today. The occupation authorities placed APHC leaders, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Nayeem Ahmed Khan and Zafar Akbar Butt under house arrest in Srinagar, today. Following the killing of an Indian trooper and two policemen in separate attacks in the occupied territory, the Indian paramilitary forces have started frisking of commuters and crackdowns in Srinagar, Pulwama, Pampore, Shopian, Islamabad, Kulgam, Kupwara and Baramulla areas.

The Kashmir Centre European Union is holding a two-day round table in the European Parliament in Brussels from today where findings of the Centre on human rights situation in occupied Kashmir will be presented. India is currently undergoing its second Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights at the United Nations in Geneva.—KMS