Afridi urges youth to become voice of unheard Kashmiris

LAHORE: Chairman Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir Shehryar Khan Afridi on Wednesday urged the youth of the country become a voice of the unheard people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) whose voices were being suppressed through black laws for decades.

Addressing the participants of a seminar held here at Lahore College for Women University (LCWU) with regard to the Kashmir Solidarity Day, Shehryar Afridi said that the world community should build pressure on India and compel it to end its genocide policy against the innocent Kashmiri people.

The Pakistani youth should become story-tellers of Kashmir as there was a need to tell the world about true stories of Kashmir.

"The world need to see Kashmir as a humanitarian issue and Kashmiris should be given the right to self determination," he added.

He said that the world needed to be told about miseries of half widows and orphans of the IIOJK and since the Kashmiris were unheard, the youth should become the voice of the unheard.

Shehryar Khan Afridi said that successive reports of the United Nations Human Rights Council and other human rights institutions had pointed out that Indian occupational forces were committing war crimes in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

He said Kashmiri women were standing like a rock and encouraging their sons to offer sacrifices for the freedom struggle, adding that Indian atrocities being committed against the fearless and brave people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu had failed to break the Kashmiri resistance and Kashmiris were adding new chapters of resistance in the human history.

He urged the academia to help generate new content on Kashmir so as new and strong narrative building process on Kashmir could be started. Academia needed to accelerate research and youth should be encouraged to write papers on Kashmiri freedom struggle and psychological issues of Kashmiris, he added.