Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir Shehryar Khan Afridi Wednesday paid glowing tributes to Kashmiri mothers, sisters and daughters on the eve of Kashmiri Women’s Resistance Day and said that the Committee had held a special meeting on the resistance day to pay tributes to Kashmiri women who are surviving the onslaught of Indian state terrorism every other day. Addressing an in-camera session of the Parliamentary Committee, Shehryar Afridi said that on February 23, 1991, the Rashtriya Rifles committed a mass rape of Kashmiri women in Kunan Poshpora which is reflection of the India’s genocidal design in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
Senior Minister Azad Jammu and Kashmir Sardar Tanvir Ilyas, Federal Secretary Ministry of Narcotics Control Syed Kaleem Imam, Secretary Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan Sher Alam Mehsud, Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Lt-Gen Babar Iftikhar, Additional Secretary Ministry of Defence Maj-Gen Khurram Sarfraz Khan, Additional Secretary MoFA Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, APHC convener Syed Faiz Naqshbandi, Kashmir Premier League President Arif Malik and Chief Executive Officer Shehzad Chaudhry, President Canada-Pakistan Global Congress Chaudhry Zafar Iqbal and others attended.
“It is an irony that despite the lapse of 31 long years, the world’s human rights organisations and International Government Organisations (IGOs) and states have failed to conduct an investigation into the mass rapes and punish those responsible,” said the Chairman Kashmir Committee.
The Chairman emphasized that Kashmiris lives and dignity matter and the international community shall intervene to stop the genocide of Kashmiri people. Shehryar Afridi said that any nation has a commitment to the human rights laws and since Kashmir is pending with the United Nations Security Council, it is the responsibility and obligation of all the member-states to uphold the human rights of the Kashmiri people.
He said that human rights is fundamental basic right and not a derivative right so it is the responsibility of the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the Kunan Poshpora mass rape as a case study and bring the culprits to justice. Shehryar Khan Afridi said that the Committee would form a four-member subcommittee to take up and investigate the discrimination and maltreatment being meted out to the Pakistani and Kashmiri diaspora in the United Kingdom and the Committee would then help raise it with the UN government.
The committee also offered fateha for the solace of the soul of the Kashmiri martyrs, the martyrs of the armed forces and paramilitary forces, Senator Rehman Malik and other Pakistanis who died in the line of duty.
