MUZAFFARABAD:
Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan has urged the international community and the United Nations to help end the most “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment meted out to the people of Jammu -and Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOJ&K) by the occupying forces.
“We fully agree with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ statement that torturers must never be allowed to escape their crimes and the systems that enable torture must be dismantled or transformed,” he said. he declared in a video message broadcast on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Torture. Torture victims observed across the world on Friday.
The AJK President said torture is a crime against humanity and is prohibited by international law and all religions. “Yet this crime is committed daily by Indian forces and authorities in the occupied territory, in the most brutal and systematic manner. »
He called on the United Nations not to generalize and blur the focus on torture where it is pervasive. In occupied Kashmir, he said, torture is most widespread and egregious.
“Torture was committed by the BJP-RSS regime by reoccupying and colonizing Jammu and Kahsmir against the wishes of its 14 million people, dividing their state into two parts and implementing decrees according to which The entire territory is now governed by a foreign capital, Delhi. “.
While lambasting the Modi-led government, President Masood said, “As we celebrate the day today, young Kashmiri men are being hunted down and killed in cold blood in fake encounters, protesters are being blinded and assaults sexual violence is used as a weapon of war. »
Kashmiris, he continued, are being deprived of their homeland by bringing in Hindus from all over India and settling them in the occupied territory through new domicile rules.
“Deprived of their right to permanent residence, Kashmiris are deprived of their jobs, livelihoods, businesses and land. Systematically, the demographics of the contested valley are permanently altered. »
PM urges international community to hold India accountable for atrocities in IOJ&K
The AJK President said that what India was doing in the occupied region constituted a war crime under the Fourth Geneva Convention, the ICC Statute and international humanitarian law.
Referring to arbitrary arrests of political leaders and political activists, he said thousands of political detainees – illegally incarcerated – are subjected to cruel torture leading in many cases to death and disability.
President Masood demanded that political prisoners in India’s Tihar Prison – Yasin Malik, Asiya Indrabi, Shabbir Shah – be released immediately and that Syed Ali Geelani and other Hurriyet leaders – hundreds of them locked up in cramped prisons – be released.
Some 13,000 boys and children, as young as 10 years old, are locked up in concentration camps where they are tortured and brainwashed, he said while calling on the international community led by the Nations United to play its role for their liberation.
He also demanded that India be urged to repeal all draconian laws that allow the occupying forces to commit crimes with impunity.
“Kashmiris are citizens of planet Earth. Listen to their SOS cries. Save their bodies; save their souls. Silence is also a crime while such massive torture is taking place before our eyes.