Senior leader of All Parties Hurriyat Conference Azad Jammu and Kashmir (APHC-AJK) chapter, Muhammad Farooq Rehmani, has emphasized the dire need to address the forgotten question of the right of self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir under the principles of the UN charter and the relevant Security Council resolutions.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Muhammad Farooq Rehmani in a letter emailed to the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, in connection with the 78th session of the UN General Assembly said the resolutions of World Body bind India and Pakistan to hold a free and impartial plebiscite to ascertain the wishes of the inhabitants of Jammu and Kashmir regarding their political future. He voiced grave concern over the pathetic and traumatic political, economic and psychological conditions of the people in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir especially after the repeal of the special status of the territory on 5 August 2019 by the present racist Modi regime of India.
Farooq Rehmani said the occupied territory was groaning under a heavy and unimaginable weight of state-sponsored tyranny but still the UN had opted dead silence over it, allowing India to squeeze the population for her own unethical and illegal political ends – spread a network, a cobweb to change demography, religion, culture, national language and everything referring to the word Muslim, despite the UN mandate on the future of the region.
The APHC-AJK leader deplored the behaviour of the Indian Modi regime towards the majority Muslim population of IIOJK, saying that an iron curtain of repressive laws had been imposed on the people. “A number of government employees have been dismissed from the services, students and scholars imprisoned, deprived of their degrees, houses, lands or orchards attached and confiscated, false criminal cases filed against youth, daily attendance before army camps made obligatory, no young person was allowed to spend his life peacefully or earn his livelihood honorably,” he deplored.
He maintained that black laws such as Disturbed Areas Act, Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, Public Safety Act, etc had been invoked long before 1990 and were still in vogue, while IIOJK had been illegally merged with India. He said that a dreadful wave of oppression on the people of Kashmir had been unleashed all over the territory and false history sheets of their relatives in Pakistan had been prepared to blackmail them for their uncommitted sins, mainly to harass them and prevent them from their peaceful life. Therefore, he said, from every angle the situation comes under the purview of the UN and it warranted action, adding that remaining a spectator would amount to support India’s repression in occupied Kashmir.
Farooq Rehmani said that the people of Kashmir supported peace as much as the UN itself, but not at the cost of their basic human and political rights. Therefore, he appealed to the UN Secretary General to intervene in the current session of the General Assembly and take up the question with India and the relevant quarters to stop New Delhi from violation of human rights of the inhabitants of Jammu and Kashmir. He informed the UN chief that a just and peaceful settlement of the Kashmir dispute was of paramount importance and hoped that he would help in granting the Kashmiris their right to self-determination.—KMS
