The Chairman of Kashmir Institute of International Relations (KIIR), Altaf Hussain Wani has expressed dismay over the inaction of the United Nations Human Rights Council on Kashmir and said that the rights body’s negligence had encouraged the Indian government to continue with its oppression and suppression in illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
The KIIR chief said this while taking part in a debate held under agenda item 2 at the ongoing 49th Session of the United Nations Human rights Council in Geneva.
Speaking on behalf of the World Muslim Congress, Altaf Hussain Wani commended the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) for highlighting the pressing problems the world was facing, today. He, however, maintained that it was unfortunate to see that the Council had not been able to take action against India whose forces had been at war with the civilian population in IIOJK for last several decades.
Drawing the Council’s attention towards the dire political and human rights situation in IIOJK, he said that the occupied territory had become a hell for its residents where the Indian government had robbed the people of all fundamental rights, even the right to life.
Wani said, we have been telling this story of Kashmir for the last thirty years in this Council and earlier in the Commission of Human Rights.
He said, the stories of the suffering of Kashmiris got some attention of the OHCHR in 2018 and 2019 when it released two reports on the situation of human rights in the occupied territory. “Ironically, the office has failed to report on the situation after that and did not move beyond that,” he said, adding that the Kashmiris demand equality and justice.
Urging the OHCHR to move beyond those two reports, the KIIR chief said that it was high time that the Council should act and establish a Commission of Inquiry to investigate past and ongoing human rights violations in IIOJK.—KMS
