ISLAMABAD: Senior All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) leader Nayeem Ahmed Khan on Saturday welcomed the recent report presented to Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council denouncing wide-ranging atrocities being inflicted upon the people of the Indian Illegally occupied Jammu & Kashmir.
In a message from Tihar jail, the incarcerated Hurriyat leader said that the report presented by the UN’s special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief was a true bill of indictment against India, which besides highlighting the other issues of concern takes the lid off the crimes Indian government and its forces have been committing against Kashmiris.
The references made about the human rights situation in Kashmir, he said, serve as an eye-opener for the world and influential world governments who choose to stay silent on the Kashmiris’ sufferings.
The APHC leader said that in light of the scathing report on the human rights situation in Kashmir there was a dire need of enhanced vigilance and continued monitoring on the part of the UN and other rights bodies. Referring to the widespread impunity enjoyed by the Indian armed forces under a host of draconian laws, Khan said that the blanket impunity was the main obstacle in bringing to justice the Indian forces who have been involved in serious war crimes such as extra-judicial killings, enforced disappearances and rape.
He pointed out that the Indian government had enacted special laws to impede accountability and obstruct victims’ access to remedies. He said that the use and abuse of laws like PSA, AFSPA by the Indian government in the aftermath of August 2019 has pushed the region further into a quagmire of uncertainty. The Modi government’s ruthless suppression of dissent under the notorious UAPA, he said, has left no room for the democratic dissent in the region.
The authoritarian policies of the Indian government, he said, have turned the region into an open-air prison where no one has the right to speak or raise his/her voice against the Indian atrocities. “Be it a politician, journalist, human rights activist or a common Kashmiri everyone is treated like a third-class citizen who have been robbed of their fundamental freedoms”, Khan said adding that anyone who dares to speak is being silenced forever being jailed under sedition laws.
Regarding the curbs of religious gatherings, the APHC leader said that sanctions on holding Friday congregations and curbs on burial rights continue unabated in the region. Terming it as an infringement into religious rights of the Kashmiris, he said that it was high time that the world’s influential governments should take a holistic review of their policies towards Kashmir and take effective notice of the heinous crimes being committed against Kashmiris.
