Daily Times

Participants of a Kashmir conference have called on the international community, including the European Union and global human rights organisations, to their influence for getting the rising human rights violations and use of pallet guns on children and women stopped in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK).

The conference titled ‘Case of Freedom for Kashmir’ was hosted by Tehreek-e- Kashmir (TeK) United Kingdom (UK) in British Burnley city. Members of European and UK Parliament expressed their deep concern over the human rights violations in held Kashmir and reiterated their support for a plebiscite to let the Kashmiris decide their future.

Muhammad Ghalib, Fahim Kayani, MEP Wajid Khan, MEP Julie Ward, MEP Sajjad Karim, MP Stephenson, MEP Julie Cooper, Vice Chairman Jammu and Kashmir Salvation Movement and APHC leader Altaf Ahmad Bhat, Azad Jammu and Kashmir Jamaat-e-Islami leader Habibur Rehman Afaqi addressed the conference, said a message released to the media the other day.

The conference condemned the unrelenting incidents of harassment of political leaders and activists in IHK and termed it a serious infringement of UN conventions and international protocols on peaceful political activities and struggle.

The conference appealed to the UN, the EU and all other global human rights organisations to use their good offices to persuade India to stop the arrest of political workers and their sympathizers in IHK where so far more than 90,000 peaceful Kashmiris had been martyred since 1990s just for demanding the right to self-determination under the UN resolutions.

The conference also appealed to the world community and global human rights organisations to use their good offices to ensure safety and security of political activists, women, school-going children and opinion makers in IHK.

The conference through a resolution also condemned the harassment of the families of political workers and other social and non-governmental organizations at the hands of Indian occupation forces in a bid to pressure them to stop demanding the implementation of UN resolutions on Kashmir.

This conference also deplored denial/withholding of travel documents of political leaders Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Yaseen Malik and Muhammad Akbar Bhat.

The conference also demanded an end to the censorship imposed on the media by the Indian government and frequent shutdowns of internet services to stop people from taking to social media to voice their feelings.

It also expressed its heartfelt condolences with the family members of all those Kashmiri political leaders and activists who fell victims to the savagery of Indian troops over the past three decades while carrying out their political activities in IHK.

The conference also extended its solidarity with the family members of political workers who either were martyred or sent to jail.

Published in Daily Times, January 2^nd 2019