Washington
The speakers have demanded the immediate release of Hurriyat leader, Masarrat Aalam Butt and other Kashmiri political leaders and activists languishing in different jails of India and illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
The Secretary General of World Kashmir Awareness Forum, Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai addressing a meeting in Washington said, “Masarrat Aalam Butt, an alumnus of a prestigious missionary Tyndale Biscoe School, is one of the most recognizable Kashmiri youth leaders.
He has been detained dozens of times for advocating the right of self-determination of the people of Kashmir.
Masarat is a political prisoner who has spent 24 years in Indian jails. He is 48.
He is in jail not because he is guilty of a crime – though he has been charged with a miscellany of offenses under arbitrarily drawn and enforced regulations – but because he believes that the people of Kashmir should be free to decide their own future in accordance with the pledge extended to them under the authority of the United Nations Security Council.”
“Mr Butt advocates that the people of Kashmir are the party most directly affected by the dispute involving their homeland.
Even though, they have made every effort to convey their point of view to the United Nations, these efforts have met with no response.
The Indian government has kept Aalam in jail for decades on more than 30 charges but never convicted him of a single one,” Fai added.
He said, the people of Kashmir have not forgotten the promise of a plebiscite. Instead, pressure from the Kashmiri people to exercise their right to self-determination has grown, he added.
“Each time Kashmiris have renewed their demands, Indian army has answered with renewed repression.
These acts of repression have now turned into a systematic ‘reign of terror’ in the Vale of Kashmir.
All the features of severe political repression are evident — the detention without trial, torture, execution, the torturing of neighborhoods, imprisonment of leadership and gang rapes by the Indian army — are common daily occurrences,” Fai maintained.
Mr. Saleem Qadri, representative of Masarat Alam Butt said, currently, Masarat has been detained under Public Safety Act (PSA). Although, the courts have quashed 38 PSAs against him.
PSA, Qadri said, is a draconian law which enables the Indian army in IIOJK to detain civilians without trial or due process for a wide variety of reasons.
“The failure of courts to get their orders implemented results in further victimization of persons held under preventive detention laws.
The practice of re-arresting detainees, like Masarat Alam is very prevalent and that is done either on the ground of frivolous FIRs or by passing of fresh detention orders one after another.
This is done to keep persons continuously under detention without trial,” Saleem Qadri explained.
Sardar Zarif Khan, President of Kashmir Solidarity Council, Washington Metropolitan area, said the people of Kashmir have come on the streets and marched towards the office of United Nations Military Observers Group for India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) and submitted hundreds of memorandums to apprise the world body of the tragic and intolerable situation in Kashmir.
It is ironic that this documentation should have failed to become a part of data for the consideration of the Security Council.
Sardar Zarif added that the United Nations bears a special responsibility to bring peace to Kashmir because it was in its chamber more than 72 years ago that India made a pledge to the world body in general and to the people of Kashmir in particular that they would be enabled to decide their future under an impartially supervised plebiscite on the basis of their innate right of self-determination.
That promise has not been kept and in fact, has been repudiated in cynical violation of the principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, he deplored.
“No consideration of the Kashmir dispute which is designed to arrive at a peaceful settlement will yield any result unless the Kashmiri viewpoint is fully taken into account,” Zarif emphasized.
The participants of the meeting appealed to the Secretary General of the United Nations as the custodian of human rights to impress upon the Government of India to release unconditionally all political prisoners, including Masarat Alam Butt, Mohammad Yasin Malik, Shabir Ahmed Shah, Mohammad Ashraf Sehrayee, Ms. Aasiya Andrabi, Nayeem Khan, Altaf Ahmad Shah, Naheeda Nasreen, Fahmeeda Sofi and Naseema Bano.
Also use his great moral authority in bringing India, Pakistan and the genuine leadership of the people of Jammu and Kashmir to the negotiating table so that peace could be restored and durable settlement explored for the battered land of Kashmir, they added.—KMS
