World urged to help stop atrocities in IHK

Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz on Saturday called upon the international community to take effective steps to stop Indian atrocities in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir and resolve the dispute by organising a referendum in accordance with the UN resolutions.
In a statement issued on the eve of Kashmir Solidarity Day, Aziz said that there is an urgent need for the international community to take effective steps to stop the Kashmiri bloodshed by India and resolve the Kashmir dispute by organising a referendum in accordance with the UN resolutions, to make a final determination if the Kashmiri people really want to live perpetually under Indian occupation.
"The Kashmir Solidarity Day, observed every year on February 05, has special significance this year because the recent uprising in Indian occupied Kashmir, following popular youth leader Burhan Wani's extrajudicial killing on July 8, 2016, has shaken the conscious of the international community", he said.
Kashmiris were subjected to a holocaust in November 1947, Aziz recalled, when Indian forces killed more than 500,000 defenceless Kashmiri men, women and children. But Kashmiris continued their struggle for their right to self-determination promised to them in 5 different UN Security Council Resolutions between 1948 and 1954. Since 1990, when this movement again gathered pace, over 100,000 Kashmiris have been martyred and tens of thousands have been arrested or maimed, he added.
Throughout this period, he added that Indian authorities armed with inhuman laws, such as Public Safety Act and AFSPA, have tried to muzzle the Kashmiri voice for freedom and refused to allow the UN Human Rights Commission, other human rights groups and international media free access to Indian occupied Kashmir to verify or report these massive human rights violations.
"But the day of July 08, 2016, marks a turning point in this historic struggle of the Kashmiri people," Aziz said, adding the brute force unleashed in the next few days led to the merciless killing of 150 youth, 20,000 were seriously injured and many hundreds were blinded either completely or partially.
This brutality, which has continued unabated in the past 7 months, has not, however, dampened the resolve of Kashmiri youth to secure their right to self-determination, he added.
He pointed out that even prominent Indian leaders and a section of the Indian media are now raising their voice against this brutality. They have testified that Kashmiri youth are in open revolt against the Indian government and are no longer afraid of losing their lives in this struggle for their fundamental rights, he added.
Another important factor, he emphasised, in this "8 July turning point" is international community's total rejection of Indian narrative that Kashmir is an integral part of India and people of Kashmir are satisfied with the present arrangement but some disturbances take place because of cross-border terrorism.
He stated the whole world now acknowledges that this is an indigenous youth-led movement which has become stronger because of the Indian government's misguided efforts to change the demographic composition of the state and its insensitivity to the rights of minority communities in India.
He further stated that there have been debates in the parliaments of many countries while civil society and human rights organisations in Europe and North America, especially in UK and Nordic countries, have been mobilising public support for their campaigns to force India to halt the bloodshed in Kashmir and resume the dialogue process with Pakistan and Kashmiri leadership to find an acceptable solution to the longstanding dispute, still on the UN agenda.
He said that India has been desperately trying to divert the attention of global community from this bloodstained reality of Kashmir by intensifying cross-border firing along the Line of Control and pretending to be a major "victim" of cross-border terrorism from Pakistan.
In this game of brinkmanship, Aziz pointed out, the Indian narrative has been totally rejected. It is now widely acknowledged that Pakistan itself is a much bigger victim of terrorism including the India-sponsored terrorism, and that in the past three years, Pakistan has achieved commendable success in tackling the menace of terrorism and extremism, he added.
He expressed his deep concern over Indian government's drive to change the demography in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, which is a blatant violation of the UN Resolutions on Kashmir.
He pointed out that the UN Secretary General has declared 2017 as the year of peace. One major hotspot of violence is the Line of Control (LoC) between Indian occupied Kashmir and Azad Jammu and Kashmir, he added.