Kashmir: AJK President seeks world’s support to Kashmiris’ right to self-determination

Jammu & Kashmir POK - Pakistan Occupied Kashmir

Azad Jammu and Kashmir President Barrister Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry said it was high time that the world community particularly the OIC member countries should fully support the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination guaranteed to them by the United Nations.

He expressed these views in a detailed meeting with the Ambassador of Turkey to Pakistan, Dr. Mehmet Pikachi, who called on him at Jammu Kashmir house in the federal metropolis on Tuesday.

Speaking on the occasion, the President thanked the Turkish people and the government for their consistent support to Kashmir cause.

The president said that the solution to the Cyprus problem lies in the establishment of two separate states.

He said that Pakistan has always supported Turkey’s principled stance on the Cyprus issue. The president told the Turkish ambassador that he would soon visit Turkey as he has already been invited by the Turkish Parliament.

Nayeem Khan urges world to help-stop bloodbath of Kashmiris in IIOJK: Senior Hurriyat leader and chairman of Jammu Kashmir National Front Nayeem Ahmed Khan while urging the international community to take effective notice of the fast deteriorating situation in the Indian-occupied Kashmir has said that it was high time that the world should play their role to help-stop bloodshed and violence in the troubled region.

In his message from Tihar jail, the illegally detained APHC leader said that India’s apartheid regime was using colonial-era tactics to suppress Kashmiris’ legitimate struggle for the right to self-determination. He said that on the one hand, India has let loose its trigger-happy forces to wreak havoc in Kashmir while on the other its other law enforcement agencies were involved in gross human rights violations including threats against Kashmiri rights defenders, political workers, journalists, and civil society activists and were conducting raids on their houses and offices to create a climate of fear in the region.

Referring to the NIA’s recent witch-hunt against the Hurriyat leaders and civil society activists, the incarcerated leader said that India’s dreaded agency-the NIA was being used as a tool by the government to terrorize the families of those who have refused to accept the BJP’s concocted narrative on Kashmir.

He lamented that since 5th August 2019, Kashmir has been under brutal suppression where fundamental freedoms particularly social and political life remains critically suppressed. “Bloodshed and violence, killings, enforced disappearances, fake encounters are all that define today’s Kashmir”, he said, adding that shrinking space for civil society and political organizations was yet another dangerous aspect of Modi’s authoritarian regime that was hell-bent to silence every dissenting voice in the region. “Every dissenting voice is being muzzled under the jackboots to ensure that no one raises his/her voice against the repression and human rights violations inflicted upon innocent civilians”, he said.

Regarding the BJP government’s political maneuvering and administrative machinations aimed at disempowering the majority community in Kashmir, Nayeem Khan said that after redrawing the electoral maps the BJP had completed its electoral demographic changes in the disputed territory by adding 7.72 lac non-local voters to J&K’s voter list. The move he said would change the dynamic of the region’s political system.

The incarcerated APHC leader urged the world community to take effective notice of the worsening situation in the region and hold the Modi government accountable for the crimes its forces have been committing in Kashmir.__Daily Times