Staff Reporter
Islamabad
President, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Sardar Masood Khan has prevailed upon Muslims across the world to unite and invest in promoting education, technology and economy to relieve the Muslim Ummah of agonies particularly oppression. He made these remarks while interacting with a delegation of the US Coalition of Muslim Organizations, who called on him in Washington on Tuesday under the leadership of its General Secretary Ousamma Jammal, said a press release.
Apprising the delegation of flagrant human rights abuses in occupied Kashmir, the AJK President said through August 5 actions, India had reoccupied the disputed territory and now it is attempting to colonize it. ‘The people living in the occupied territory have been detained in their own homes under the garb of incessant curfew restrictions,’ he added. He commended the efforts of the USCMO for raising critical awareness on Kashmir, and said that collective strengths were needed to be continued to synergize to help alleviate the sufferings of Kashmiri people.
‘There is also a need to engage lawmakers in encouraging hearings on Kashmir in the US House’s Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations,’ he said and added that debates on Kashmir have to be initiated in Congress. The state president said that the growing Hindu extremism is an existential threat to Muslims and all other minorities living in South Asia. Extremist ideologies advocating concepts like Ghar Wapsi (return to Hinduism), Love Jihad (opposition to Muslim-Hindu marriages) and Gao Raksha (prohibition of eating cow meat) have become the norm in the so-called ‘secular’ India, he added.
Sardar Masood Khan urged the USCMO delegation to continue to communicate with lawmakers, international human rights organizations and civil rights activists and help stop the grave human rights violations taking place in occupied Kashmir, and also exert pressure on the UN Security Council to revoke the unilateral steps taken by the Indian government and urge to take practical steps to ensure the right to self-determination for the Kashmiri people.
Lamenting the passive role of the UN Secretary-General and the UN Security Council, he said that they have to realize the gravity of the situation in the disputed territory and forgo their anodyne approach to the crisis. He said that due to India’s aggressive militaristic policy there is a very real threat of nuclear war between the two states and the global community must make every endeavor to avert war.
