The speakers at a seminar hosted by Community Human Rights and Advocacy Center Thursday said that the India’s RSS influenced regime led by Modi was pursuing Israeli model of demographic engineering in Indian Illegal Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) to turn Muslim majority into a minority.
The seminar titled “Demographic Engineering in Indian occupied Kashmir: Violation of International Law & UNSC Resolutions” was attended by the international law experts, rights activists and political activists hailing from different parts of the world including veteran human rights activist Mousie Wahabudin, Altaf Hussain Wani Chairman KIIR/permanent representative WMC, Kashmiri leader Advocate Parvaiz Shah, Muzamil Ayoub Thakur president Kashmir Freedom Movement and others, said a press release here.
The speakers while underling the devastating impacts of the prolonged military of Kashmir by India said that the Indian government’s systematic campaign aimed at bringing material change in the held valley was in complete violation of the UN Security Council’s resolutions and the Geneva Convention.
Referring to the Indian government’s unilateral actions it had taken on Kashmir since 2019, they said that ripping Kashmir of its special status by abolishing article 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution had changed the entire dynamics of the Kashmir dispute.
Terming it as an atrocious assault on Kashmir’s political and national identity, the speakers said that since 5th August 2019 Modi regime enacted a regime of new law that provided an impetus to the BJP’s policies aimed at altering the demography of the disputed territory.
“Annulment of the article 35-A in particular paved a way for the BJP to implement its agenda in Kashmir as revocation of the article virtually opened floodgates for non-Kashmiris to get them settle in the region”, they said, adding that the repealing of article 370 and 35-A had been the right-wing Hindu supremacists’ dream project, which was ultimately executed and implemented by Modi-the front man of the RSS.
Referring to sweeping changes made in the state’s domicile and other relevant land laws, they said that these laws were specially modified to encourage Hindus to settle in the held valley on a permanent basis. They said that the policy was akin to Israel’s model of occupation of Palestine.
Speaking at length on demographic changes in the IIOJK, they said that establishing separate housing colonies of Pandits, Sanik colonies in the Kashmir valley were part of the BJP’s settler colonialism policy.
These policies, they said, not only ran counter to international law and other human rights treaties but these actions were also in violation of the UNSC resolutions that strongly prohibit an occupying state from taking any unilateral decision that might undermine the status of a disputed territory.