Indian Army admitted the other day of committing cold blooded murder of three innocent Kashmiris in Sophian District two months ago. On July 18 this year, Indian occupation forces had martyred three young Kashmiri boys from Rajouri in so-called search and cordon operation. To cover up the cold-blooded murder of these innocent Kashmiris, the Indian army had claimed that the three were unidentified terrorists. To further hide their crime, instead of handing over human remains to families of the victims, the occupation forces had buried them in a graveyard marked for ‘foreign terrorists’.
This despicable incident cannot be seen in isolation. In fact this is not the first incident or anything new in the Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) but there are thousands of such cases perpetrated by Indian forces. Genocide of Kashmiri people is taking place in the occupied territory with complete impunity. Indian forces are killing innocent youth in staged encounters in IIOJK to suppress Kashmiris’ ongoing struggle for securing their right to self-determination. Since the unilateral and illegal steps of August 05 last year, India has taken its brutalisation of innocent Kashmiris to a new level. More than, three hundred, mostly young Kashmiris have been extra judicially killed in fake encounters in IIOJK over last one year while figure of detained persons run into thousands.
The use of pellet guns is another phenomenon that the Kashmiri people are faced with on daily basis. Time has come that international community rise above mere lip service and fulfil its obligations towards innocent and oppressed Kashmiri people by holding accountable the oppressor. The Indian troops are committing war crimes in occupied territory at the whims of Modi government. Therefore, Modi and his associates should be tried as war criminals like in the past Augusto Pinochet, President of Chile and Slobodan Milosevic, President of Republic of Yugoslavia were tried for carrying out such crimes against humanity, and all of them were convicted. As Indian Army has committed another crime of killing three innocent youth in Sophian, our Foreign Office was also quick to call for a transparent judicial inquiry, under international scrutiny into extra judicial killing of the Kashmiris.
Mere speeches and statements and repeating them over and over again will not help Kashmiris get liberation from cruel Indian clutches but we Pakistanis will have to practically stand by them. Pakistan is party to Kashmir dispute and after the Indian admission, it should file a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court under the Rome Statute against Modi and his associates for crimes against humanity and genocide in IIOJK. If a small country like Gambia can stand for Rohingya Muslims why can’t Pakistan go for oppressed Kashmiris in ICJ and ICC?
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting deserves appreciation for holding number of seminars on Kashmir over the last two months to draw attention towards the lingering dispute. But it will not be wrong to say there is an intellectual deficit in our narration on Jammu and Kashmir dispute. If one looks at Indian narrative, they have written hundreds and thousands of books and research articles on the dispute. Naturally, in the world, whatever is printed and published gets the reference by other intellectuals and scholars. We also need to make our narrative more convincing in order to build a strong case for world’s attention.
