APHC darts letter to UN mission in Kashmir: Read it here
Memorandum
Srinagar: With profound hope, we appeal to Your Excellency, on behalf of the besieged people of Jammu Kashmir, who are facing an unprecedented wave of repression at the hands of Indian occupation forces particularly during the last three months.
We firmly believe that the United Nations Military Observer’s Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP), through its internal information systems, must be reporting truthfully to Your Excellency on the brutal state violence that India continues to perpetrate for last 69 years.
During the last three months, in response to the peaceful calls for resolution of Kashmir dispute, Indian state forces have deliberately killed more than 90 civilians including children, women and old. They have blinded around 900, maimed and injured more than 15000, ransacked thousands of homes, burnt tons of rice grains across the valley and even killed livestock of people. Indian forces have arrested more than 8000 people besides juveniles including 7 years old children. Even human rights defenders have been detained under state’s draconian law and an English local daily has been banned for reporting the truth as it is.
Yet we, the worst victims of violence and state terror for seven decades, believe in peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute based on the universal values of freedom and justice through the internationally acknowledged and promised principle of self-determination.
We remain open to any effort aimed at achieving the same. However, it’s the Indian state that stonewalls every effort at peacebuilding through its arrogant and indifferent intransigence.
Indian arrogance reached its zenith when it rejecting the request of UNHRC for access to this part of Kashmir. Adding insult to the injury, its foreign minister claimed Kashmir to be integral part of India, from the podium of UN General Assembly; wherein Kashmir remains an oldest internationally acknowledged dispute. Even though India’s false assertion didn’t raise many hackles at UN General Assembly, putting a question mark on the forum’s credibility; the truth of Kashmir echoed in the global conversations and attracted sympathies and support from far and wide.
Returning disappointed from the global forum and buckling under the pressure of its ferocious collective Hindu consciousness that continues to devour humans and societies for its satisfaction, India started beating the war drums harder only to deflect the growing global attention on Kashmir. Going further ahead, they have created a war hysteria after claiming ‘surgical strikes’ in Azad Kashmir. Spiralling out of control, this state of affairs can trigger a lethal confrontation in the region, resulting in further destruction of life, resources and property which, we understand, needs to be avoided.
Since we believe and understand that Kashmir dispute remains at the centre of the regional conflict, we appeal you to challenge the behaviour of Indian State in Jammu Kashmir and urge it to stop this reign of terror. In the interests of regional peace and global justice we once again implore you to intervene and prevail upon the Indian state to shun violence and initiate processes for granting universally recognised Right to Self Determination to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
Waiting for your intervention,
People of Jammu & Kashmir