TORONTO : President of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Sardar Masood Khan has urgedthe Canadian Senate, House of Commons and Ontario Legislative Assembly toraise and discuss the Kashmir issue and send a fact-finding mission to bothIndian Occupied Kashmir and Azad Kashmir to help find a solution of thelong-standing dispute and ascertain horrendous human rights situation inIOK.
During visiting Toronto at the invitation of the Consulate General ofPakistan, Toronto and the Kashmir Committee, Canada, the President of AzadKashmir made this appeal while addressing members of the prestigiousCanadian International Council (CIC), whose President, Fraser Mann,presided over the session. Mr. Imran Ahmed Siddiqui, the Pakistan ConsulGeneral, also attended the event.
In the past, the CIC has attracted speakers including prime ministers,foreign ministers, heads of international organisations, and prominentacademics.
While thanking the Council for holding an exclusive session on Kashmir, thePresident invited Council members to visit Azad Kashmir and see forthemselves the AJK Government’s endeavours to promote human rights, therule of law, access to justice and accountability; as well as to fosterhuman development by investing heavily in road infrastructure, powergeneration, industrial growth, agriculture, health and quality education.
Sardar Masood Khan thanked Canada for its contribution to the decisionmaking on Kashmir in the Security Council, in the very early phase, and itssupport to and participation in the United Nations Military Observer Groupin India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP).
The President told his audience how the international community at longlast has broken its silence on the massive, gross and consistent humanrights violations in the Indian Occupied Kashmir. He drew the attention ofthe Canadian Council to the report on the situation of human rights in IOKreleased recently in Geneva by the Office of the High Commissioner forHuman Rights, which meticulously chronicles evidence of a rampant cultureof impunity and denial of access to justice in IOK, as well asbrutalisation of Kashmiris through killings, excessive use of force, massblindings of protesters or bystanders, torture, enforced disappearances andsexual violence.
This, President Masood Khan said, is not enough because the Office of theHigh Commissioner for Human Rights was constrained to collect this datathrough “remote monitoring” because of India’s denial of access to IOKproposed by the High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2016. He urged Canadato support in the Human Rights Council the High Commissioner’s freshproposal to establish a Commission of Inquiry to investigate Indian forceshuman rights violations in IOK, which are tantamount to crimes againsthumanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The AJK President informed his audience that the All Parties ParliamentaryKashmir Group (APPKG) in the British Parliament would soon release a reportto substantiate how India’s two notorious draconian laws – the Armed ForcesSpecial Powers Act and the Public Security Act – had given a license tokill unarmed Kashmiris and shield the perpetrators of these crimes fromlegal scrutiny, prosecution and punishments. These laws, he said, permitstate authorities to arbitrarily detain persons without charge or judicialreview for up to two years without telling the detainee what his crime isor giving him family visitation rights. The occupation forces, he said, usedeadly force to kill people in brutal cordon and search operations orarrest them on suspicion of having committed a crime or on the suspicionsof “… is about to commit a crime”.
“These laws must be rescinded forthwith”, the President said and appealedthat the international community should put pressure on India to abide bythe rules of proportionality, distinction and precaution, stop committingwar crimes and targeting unarmed non-combatants.
The President also demanded that India should be asked to allow independentand impartial international investigations into unmarked mass graves todetermine the identity of the victims of India’s state terrorism.Similarly, instances of sexual violence should be independentlyinvestigated and prosecuted.
The President said that the basic rights of the Kashmiris and theirfundamental freedoms should be restored by lifting restrictions on theInternet, mobile phones, newspapers and journalists.
President Masood Khan denounced India’s practice of constantly keeping theleaders of Joint Resistance Leadership – Syed Ali Gilani, Mirwaiz UmerFarooq and Yasin Malik – under detention. “These true and faithfulrepresentatives of Kashmir must be released”.
The President said that the root cause of the human rights crisis inKashmir is the denial of the right to self-determination to the people ofJammu and Kashmir and India’s refusal to resolve the Kashmir disputethrough dialogue and diplomacy, as demanded by the people of Kashmir andPakistan. India, he said, wants to resolve the issue through the use ofstate terrorism and brute force but it would never succeed in that mission.
When asked about the best methodology to resolve the issue, the Presidentresponded: “Let’s put the Kashmir dispute on the table and set up peacetables in Islamabad, Delhi, Srinagar, Muzaffarabad and New York. Let thewill of the Kashmiri people prevail. Let them decide their political futurein accordance with a dispensation spelt out by the United Nations. Let’sbanish violence in the region. But first and foremost, let’s put an end toIndia’s repression in Kashmir. That should be the starting point.”
Replying to a series of questions by an ex Indian army officer, who alsoattended the event, the President said Kashmiri Pandits can come back andsettle in Kashmir and Muslim population would welcome them in their midst.
The President categorically said that according to the Indian securityofficials no infiltration was taking place across the Line of Control fromthe Azad Kashmir side; the movement in Kashmir was indigenous.
One of the Indian participants among audience said that UNMOGIP was notfunctioning and its members went merely for sight-seeing in Srinagar. ThePresident said that on the Pakistan/Kashmiri side, the mission wasfunctional and was fully supported by the Pakistan Government; and askedthe Indian side to do the same and not try to sabotage and scuttle this UNmission, which is mandated to monitor the ceasefire along the Line ofControl