Staff reporter
Islamabad
People gathered in mosques across Pakistan on Monday to offer special prayers for Eidul Azha. The government has called for the festival to be observed in a “simple manner” this year, to express solidarity with Kashmiris living in Indian-occupied Kashmir. On Aug 5, India dropped a constitutional provision that had allowed Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir to make its own laws, and also broke up the state into two federally administered territories. Before moving a rushed presidential order in its Senate, New Delhi placed Kashmiri leaders under house arrest and imposed a strict curfew.
The changes are the most sweeping in the nearly 30 years that India has been battling an uprising in occupied Kashmir.
On Monday, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi travelled to Muzaffarabad, capital of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, to offer Eid prayers at a mosque there.
“(I) have come here to express Pakistan’s solidarity with you,” Qureshi told worshippers.
In the southern city of Karachi, prayers were dedicated to Kashmiris in occupied Kashmir.
“We are together with our Kashmiri brothers,” said resident Mohammad Adnan.
“We share their pain and grief. Today, special prayers were offered for them inside the mosque.”
