APHC-AJK convener draws UN chief’s attention to Kashmiri detainees’ plight, Indian judicial terrorism
Islamabad: The APHC-AJK chapter Convener, Mehmood Ahmad Saghar has drawn the attention of the United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres towards the plight of Kashmiri political prisoners languishing in jails of occupied Jammu and Kashmir and India, urging him to take effective cognisance of Narendra Modi-led government’s judicial terrorism against these prisoners.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the APHC-AJK Convener, in a letter addressed to the UN chief, wrote, the Kashmiri prisoners, who spent their entire lives for advocating peaceful settlement of the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the UNSC resolutions, are being branded as traitors and treated like criminals because of their political beliefs.
Mehmood Ahmad Saghar said, thousands of prisoners, including pro-freedom leaders, rights activists, journalists, lawyers and businessmen who have been arrested before and after 5th August 2019, continue to languish in Indian prisons. He said hundreds of political and civil rights activists including the top tier leadership of Hurriyat Conference including Masarrat Aalam Butt, Muhammad Yasin Malik, Shabir Ahmed Shah, Nayeem Ahmed Khan, Asiya Andrabi and several others have been arrested and booked under sedition laws such as PSA and UAPA.
Saghar said, a court in New Delhi has recently sentenced prominent Kashmiri pro-freedom leader Yasin Malik to life term in a politically motivated case, adding, “There is a fear that the Indian government would apply the same tactics to eliminate other Kashmiri voices who openly challenge the Indian contention on Kashmir and refuse to take Indian diktats”.
He said, booking and detaining political activists under anti-terrorism laws has become a new normal in IIOJK, adding, “It is quite unfortunate that the Indian government has been using judiciary as a tool to crush the legitimate Kashmiri voices”.
Saghar lamented, “Ruthless persecution of the Kashmiri prisoners and handing down capital punishments to them in manifestly dubious and politically motivated cases is nothing more than a textbook example of judicial terrorism”.
He said, “The Indian government’s policies of oppression and suppression marked by a callous indifference to human life and fundamental freedoms constitute a grave existential threat to the people of Kashmir”.
At the end, while seeking UN chief Antonio Guterres’ personal intervention in the matter, the APHC-AJK convener said this could help save the lives of Kashmiri prisoners who are at the risk of losing their lives at the hands of biased Indian judiciary.
