Staff Reporter
Islamabad
The National Assembly’s Committee on Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan Friday asked the government to establish a ‘Kashmir Cell’ at Pakistani embassies and missions across the world to highlight the atrocities and brutalities being committed by the occupation forces in the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJ&K).
Briefing the committee meeting, chaired by Rana Shamim Ahmed Khan, on the prevailing situation in occupied Kashmir, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Cell (J&KLC) Secretary Mansoor Qadir Dar suggested that the Pakistan government should set up a Kashmir Cell at all its embassies and missions abroad.
He said the Kashmir issue should be raised at all the international forums in a more effective manner and the Kashmiri diaspora should be mobilized for the purpose so that real face of India could be exposed before the world community.
He said scholars and writers should also be engaged, and encouraged to write on the issue, besides holding national and international seminars for the promotion of Kashmir cause across the country, including Azad Jammu Kashmir.
About articles 370 and 35-A of the Indian constitution, he said Clause (1) of Article 370 empowered the Indian president to issue a constitutional order under some limitations. The IOJ&K had been accorded special status under that article, he added.
Mansoor Dar said the size of Muslim population in the IOJ&K had reduced to 68 percent in 2011 from 78 percent in 1947. He said the basic purpose of abrogating the articles was to change the demography of IOJ&K by settling non-Kashmiris there and turning the majority into a minority.
Permanent resident certificates would be issued to the children of non-Kashmiri Hindu families in the IOJ&K, he added. The J&KLC secretary said ‘Sainik’ colonies were being established in the IOJ&K to allot land to the non-Kashmiris and families of Indian army personnel, who died in held Kashmir or served there for minimum three years.
He apprised the committee that bilateral trade along the Line of Control had been suspended since March 7 this year. The Muzaffarabad-Uri route had also been unilaterally closed by India while the Poonch-Rawalakhot route was still open, he added.
