Our Correspondent
Muzaffarabad
Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan Tuesday said the rising fascism in a new garb projected by the current Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) government must be stopped in its tracks. The current fascist regime could come to an end if a truly democratic force rose in India, he said in a series of tweets, according to AJK Presidential Secretariat.
Responding to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s accusation at the Non-Aligned Movement moot that ‘some countries are spreading ‘other deadly viruses’ such as terrorism, fake news and doctored videos’, Sardar Masood said the allegations were ‘what you (Modi) and the RSS specializes in. Mo one would dare poach on your territory.’
President Masood Khan in another tweet while responding to India’s strong protest with Pakistan over moves to hold elections in Gilgit-Baltistan, said,’India should vacate Occupied Jammu and Kashmir without caveats and qualifications. The people and the land are not part of the Indian Federation. End the occupation forthwith.’
He said as an occupier it (India) had occupied an internationally recognized disputed territory and had illegally called it an ‘integral part’ of the Indian Union. The AJK President, in another tweet, categorically rejected British Labour Party leader Sir Keir Starmer’s argument that Kashmir was a bilateral issue. Referring to a Kashmir conference held last year in the House of Commons, hosted by Conservative MP Paul Bristow, he said the conference was attended by 50 MPs and Peers, majority Conservatives, followed by Labour, Lib-Dems and S&P. ‘Kashmir is a cross-party issue (in the UK),’ he said.
Masood Khan also extended his felicitations to Associated Press’s (AP) photographers Dar Yasin, Mukhtar Khan and Channi Anand who have been awarded the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for extraordinary photojournalism of the crisis and military lockdown in IOJK. ‘Bravo! … they put their lives at risk to cover brutal lockdown in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir’, said Masood Khan.