The Chairman of Kashmir Council Europe (KC-EU), Ali Raza Syed, has urged the G20 countries to play their effective role for a peaceful set-tlement of the Kashmir dispute.
According to Kashmir Media Service, in this context, KC-EU Chairman wrote a letter to heads of the states and governments of the G20 member countries, including US, UK, EU, China, France, Russia, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Türkiye.
The letter was dispatched to the highest authorities of the G20 countries through their embassies in Brussels at the threshold of current G20’s submit in New Delhi. The summit hosted by the Indian government is being held on 9-10 September 2023.
The letter demanded immediate and uncondi-tional end to the human rights violations in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), immediate release of Yasin Malik, Shabbir Shah, Farooq Dar, Khurram Parvez, Irfan Meraj and other Kashmiri political figures and human rights activists and journalists.
In his letter, Ali Raza Syed urged G20 members to put pressure on India to allow the international human rights organizations and international media groups to visit the IIOK freely and independently and permit the people of Jammu and Kashmir to decide their political future through a plebiscite under international supervision.
The letter gives references of restrictions on travel of independent international media persons and international human rights defenders to the occupied Kashmir and continued crackdown on local media and civil society groups through the controversial laws in the disputed region.
The letter describes, although, the people of Kashmir are suffering for more than seven decades due to their struggle for right to self-determination, its four years that New Delhi has increased its brutalities against the Kashmiris as its revoked imperative constitutional rights and special status of Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019.
Since August 2019, the Indian government has awfully continued its repressive policies, including restricting freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and association and failed to investigate and stop the violations of human rights committed by its military, paramilitary, police and other forces.
Many of the political figures, human rights de-fenders and journalists, including Yasim Malik, the Chairman Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), prominent political figures Shabbir Ahmad Shah, Farooq Dar and Khurram Parvez, the Program Coordinator of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS) and the Chairperson of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD) and Irfan Meraj (journalist/human rights activist) are being persecuted in the unlawful detention.
Ali Raza Syed reminds, actually Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory, and this dispute has been acknowledged through the United Nations resolutions.
According to the international laws, the people of Kashmir have the right to struggle for their right to self determination and liberation of their land from the occupation but Indian occupation forces are trying to suppress the people through brutali-ties.—KMS
