Observer Report
Jeddah
Sardar Masood Khan, President of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, has thanked the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for its consistent and steadfast support to the people of Jammu and Kashmir since 1990. He also thanked the leadership of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for their strong solidarity with the people of Pakistan and Kashmir in difficult times.
Addressing a seminar organised by the Pakistan Consulate General in Jeddah, the OIC General Secretariat and Pakistan’s Permanent Mission to the OIC on the occasion of the Kashmir Black Day, President Masood Khan said that “every day is a black day for the besieged people of Jammu and Kashmir” reminding everybody of the 113th day of the crippling lockdown in the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
The seminar and the Kashmir Black day was organised at the premises of the OIC headquarters where a pictorial exhibition on the theme of the gruesome human rights situation in IOJK was also arranged. Pakistan’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Raja Ali Ejaz, OIC Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and OIC Special Envoy for Jammu and Kashmir Yousef Aldobeay, newly-appointed Pakistan Permanent Representative to OIC Rizwan Saeed Sheikh, Consul General Khalid Majid, and APHC representatives Syed Abdullah Gilani and Faiz Naqshbandi also addressed the seminar.
The AJK Presidents on the occasion said that the OIC had created mechanisms – such as the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir, the Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission and Special Envoy on Jammu and Kashmir – that had enabled it to monitor the Kashmir situation closely and methodically.
He thanked the OIC Secretary General Dr. Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen for his strong statement and the OIC’s powerful communiqué following India’s illegal actions on August 5. The Communiqué, he said, had in clear and strong words condemned Indian actions and demanded an end to Indian repression, restoration of the rights of Kashmiris, lifting of the telecommunications blockade, and resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.
President Masood Khan urged the OIC to hold an extraordinary session on the situation in IOJK because the human rights and humanitarian situation was deteriorating every day, announce to send a fact-finding mission, and ask India to receive OIC’s Special Envoy on Jammu and Kashmir. India, he said, would say NO to the last two demands but this would underline the firm resolve of the OIC to closely monitor the human rights situation and send a clear message that it would not leave their Kashmiri brothers and sisters alone.
