Staff Reporter
Islamabad
Strongly denouncing new domicile rules imposed by India in the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJK), Sardar Masood Khan, President Azad Jammu and Kashmir, has said that the international community has failed to respond to India’s unlawful and criminal actions.
He said it was unfortunate that Indian government has announced plans to settle Hindus from India who have lived in the occupied territory for 15 years or studied there for 7 years or have appeared in Secondary and Higher Secondary School Examinations.
‘This is a vicious plan to settle former military personnel and civil servants as well as their children and families, migrant workers and West-Pakistan refugees in the occupied territory. The ex-military officers and civil servants were in fact agents of the occupying power – India – and were instrumental in brutalizing and torturing the people of Kashmir’, he said.
The AJK President lamented that the international community, especially the United Nations Security Council, the Human Rights Council and the ICRC, have failed to take notice of this flagrant violation of international law.
‘We understand that the world leadership is rightly focused on combating the coronavirus pandemic, but failure to call out India’s latest crime against humanity in IOJK is a serious dereliction of responsibility’, he said in a statement issued here on Saturday.
Sardar Masood Khan thanked the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for condemning India’s illegal domicile rules which aim to alter the demographic and geographic status of the occupied territory, in violation of international human rights law, Fourth Geneva Convention and OIC and UN Security Council (UN SC) resolutions.
The AJK President called for the OIC to work with the UN to quash these rules which would turn Muslims in the IOJK into a minority, grab their land and deprive them of their established rights in regard to permanent residence, acquisition of property, education and employment. ‘This is a blatant attempt to colonise Kashmir and crush Kashmiris identity and rights’, he said.
President Masood said that the international humanitarian law, especially Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention clearly states that ‘the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies’.
