Observer Report
Phnom Penh
Security at the Asia Pacific Summit, 2019 escorted out Indian politician Vijay Jolly after he angrily tried to disrupt the speech by National Assembly Deputy Speaker Qasim Suri on Tuesday.
Suri was speaking about Kashmiris’ right to self-determination at the summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia when an enraged Jolly — a leader of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — got up from his seat and walked in front of the hall saying, “I want to protest.”
In a video clip, he was seen pointing and yelling at the summit’s participants sitting in the front row, when security guards came and took him outside the hall. Suri continued to speak despite the commotion. The deputy speaker, in his speech, said: “I want to direct your attention towards the human rights violations in Indian-occupied Kashmir. Almost 100,000 Kashmiris have been martyred and thousands are missing.
“More than 11,000 women have been raped. More than 8,000 unmarked graves have been found [of people] affected by Indian atrocities.” He added that the occupied territory is under a strict curfew and a communications blackout has been in place for the past 106 days.
He also pointed out that the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has recorded usage of pellet guns, extrajudicial killings and torture of civilians by the Indian forces.
Tensions between Pakistan and India which got engaged in a military stand-off in February have remained high this year, but spiked sharply after India revoked occupied Kashmir’s autonomy on August 5.
