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| KCC expresses serious concern over human rights violation in J&K | | | Toronto | Nov 24
On the occasion of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Kampala, Uganda (November 23-25), Kashmiri-Canadian Council (KCC) has urged leaders to persuade India and Pakistan to allow the people of Kashmir the right of self-determination and help to end their suffering and deprivation. . Mushtaq A. Jeelani, Executive Director of the KCC in separate letters to 53 Commonwealth leaders and the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth, expressed his serious concern about worsening human rights situation in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.
The Executive Director reminded the leaders that the people of Kashmir continue to be deprived of their inalienable right of self-determination, which is enshrined in the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council, and have remained unimplemented for over half a century. He underscored that the Kashmir issue has dominated the geopolitics of South Asia for the past 60 years because of continuing rivalry between India and Pakistan - both members of the Commonwealth. They have fought three wars since their independence. The dispute between the rivals is the root of competing in nuclear arms race, which has resulted into the diversion of their resources from human development to militarization. Regrettably, it is the people of Kashmir who have been caught in the middle of this deadly tug-of-war, he added.
The Executive Director reminded the leaders that despite the warming ties between the rivals there is no let-up in systematic human rights abuses. The occupying troops continue to carry out arbitrary detention, summary executions, custodial killings, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, rape, sexual exploitation, torture and fake encounters. Since October 1989, the 700,000 strong Indian forces have killed more than 100,000 Kashmiris to silence the people’s demand for freedom, justice and respect for human rights. He added that generations of Kashmiris have grown up under the shadow of the gun; not a single family is unaffected; property worth hundreds of millions dollars has been destroyed and the suffering and devastation continues unabated, which has sadly drawn no significant attention from the international community, including the Commonwealth.
Jeelani cautioned the leaders that impunity has become a license for the Indian occupation forces to wreak havoc with the lives of Kashmiris. The deliberate and unprovoked attacks and other patterns of abuse have all become too frequent to report. No perpetrator has ever been prosecuted in a real manner, despite the fact that such crimes have been extensively documented by many international human rights organizations including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. Very recently the New York-based Human Rights Watch has again demanded an immediate end to impunity in Kashmir.
He reminded the leaders that 15 million people of Kashmir are yearning for peace, justice and freedom. They want a just and dignified peace that guarantees total freedom from foreign occupation and alien domination. Their struggle to achieve that right of self-determination will not be extinguished until India and Pakistan accept its exercise by the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Executive Director urged the leaders to encourage the UN to implement its longstanding resolutions on Kashmir; by doing so the Commonwealth will in principle implement the Harare Declaration: “support the United Nations and other international institutions in world’s search for peace, disarmament and effective arms control; and in the promotion of international consensus on major political, economic and social issues.” Jeelani warned that the failure of the Commonwealth to address the unresolved issue of Kashmir would be making a mockery of the 1991 Harare Declaration and point to institutional weaknesses in the Commonwealth’s capacity to promote and protect human rights. |
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