London
The Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front UK chapter has said that the Indian government illegally scrapped Kashmir’s special status on August 05, last year and divided it into two union territories.
Zafar Khan, Chairman of Diplomatic Bureau of Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front-London, in a letter addressed to the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, said that a year ago on 5th August 2019, India abolished articles 370 and 35A of its Constitution and divided Kashmir two union territories to be ruled from Delhi.
He said that it was done in a veil of secrecy, and with the arrest of political opponents including JKLF Chairman Muhammad Yasin Malik, under the draconian Public Safety Act (PSA). Jaamat-e-Islami, and JKLF were banned under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) in March 2019.
He said the illegal act of the Indian government not only betrayed Kashmiris but also snubbed the international community, as India defied many UN resolutions on Kashmir.
He said that leading up to the illegal decision India made certain that opponents of its undemocratic and sinister machinations, were put behind the bars. Yasin Malik in particular, who being head of the JKLF, was also one of the three leaders of the Joint Resistance Leadership, was arrested on 22nd February 2019 from his residence in Srinagar. Currently he remains incarcerated in solitary confinement at Tihar Jail in Delhi.
The JKLF leader said India negotiated with the government of Kashmir in 1949 to agree on a special status for Kashmir and Article 370 was created in its constitution. He said Article 35A was added to India’s constitution in 1954, and it empowered Kashmir’s Legislature to define rights of residence and citizenship.
He said the UN has a duty of care towards Kashmiris, not only to protect their democratic, social, economic, cultural and religious heritage, as well as their fundamental human rights, but to ensure territorial integrity of their homeland.
He said people are deliberately deprived of communications and internet services, not because there is a threat to India’s enormous and unaccountable military, and bureaucratic power in Kashmir, but rather through use of India’s unrestrained oppressive military and civil power, it is as part of its ‘operation all out’ policy to humiliate, and break the spirit and dignity of Kashmiri people.
The JKLF leader wrote that the manifest Indian policy is to open up Kashmir for Indian settlers, and dilute and obliterate centuries-old character and heritage of Kashmiri society, through domicile rules.
Abolition of articles 35A and 370 has enabled Indian government to set in motion processes to achieve its nefarious objectives with impunity. Inevitably new domicile rules will disenfranchise, and dispossess the Muslim majority in the territory, he added.—KMS
