AJK President calls for sanctions against India over IIOJK genocide

MIRPUR [AJK]: Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan Thursday thanked the people and the government of Turkey particularly President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for their strong and steadfast support to the oppressed people of Jammu and Kashmir as well as Palestine.

In his opening remarks at the roundtable conference on "Kashmir – Evaluating the Way Forward" organized by the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA), Sabahattin Zaim University Istanbul, he asserted that hectic efforts were needed to place the ongoing genocide of Kashmiri people in the held territory, on centre stage and on the global agenda, AJK President office said.

He went on to say that the killings, blinding, massacres, staged encounters, rapes, and the arbitrary arrests manifest the genocide in the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. "Thousands of youth languishing in concentrations camps are being tortured and brainwashed," he added.

Enumerating the events of the last seven months, the state President said millions of Hindus have been illegally imported from India and settled in the occupied territory to change the demography of the state, and millions more are preparing to move into the occupied territory.

"Such systematic transplantation of population has no precedent in the history of occupation, colonial rule and warfare," he said adding that the lands of Kashmiri people are being robbed and grabbed for illegal settlements by non-native occupation authorities and 900,000 occupation armed forces.

Sardar Masood Khan lamented that the Kashmiri people have been besieged in their own homeland where foreign marauders are preying on local population and the predators are committing crimes against the Kashmiri Muslims, who have been cut off from the rest of the world?

“The occupied territory is the worst Islamophobic hotspot in the world where the people are being annihilated because they are Muslims, and their religious identity and their aspiration for freedom have become their bane,” he added.

The state president said that the violent BJP-RSS regime while pursuing a hate-driven Hindutva doctrine has turned the occupied territory into the worst axis of Indian state-sponsored terrorism.

He lamented that the United Nations is not fulfilling its responsibilities and obligations. Therefore, the Kashmir movement needs to be turned into an international civil rights movement in order to exert pressure on multilateral forums to move on Kashmir to take decisions.

Sardar Masood Khan appealed to Turkey to activate its humanitarian diplomacy on Kashmir and establish a humanitarian corridor for the Kashmiri people. "Let us also try to set up peace tables for dialogue and diplomacy to resolve the Kashmir dispute and give Kashmiris their right to self-determination," he said and added that no place is better than Istanbul for such an engagement.

The AJK president also called upon the international community to hold the Indian regime accountable and bring the Indian genocidaires to justice.