Civil society urges UN, OIC to act decisively on Kashmir
Srinagar: The Civil Society has drawn the attention of the United Nations Secretary General, António Guterres and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Secretary-General Hissein Brahim Taha towards the lingering Kashmir dispute and continued human rights violations in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the Civil Society members, including Dr Zubair Ahmed Raja, Muhammad Furhan, Muhammad Iqbal Shaheen and Syed Haider Hussain in a meeting in Srinagar said the BJP-led Indian government has curbed all political and legal rights of oppressed people in the occupied territory, mainly targeting pro-freedom leaders, activists, journalists and rights activists who have been critical of the Indian government’s muscular and anti-Kashmir policies.
The meeting said the Indian authorities led by New Delhi installed Lieutenant Governor Manoj Sinha have intensified its clamp down in the occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir.
The BJP regime is using Indian army, police and agencies to continue house raids and interrogate common people. The regime has reopened decades old cases against hundreds of political activists. They are summoned to police stations every now and then, harassed and humiliated and dragged to the courts far away from their homes.
Arbitrary arrests of Kashmiri political leaders and activists and booking them under draconian laws and leaving them to rot in jails and interrogation cells without producing in the court of law, denying them their fundamental right to defend their cases, getting them punished in fake and fabricated cases, awarding severe punishments such as death penalties, reopening old cases in which they have been already acquitted, and dragging them to the courts has become a new normal in Kashmir, the meeting observed.
The civil society members appealed to UN and OIC to take swift and decisive action by demanding the Indian government to stop the use of state repression to crush political dissent in Kashmir by using its judiciary as a weapon to punish Kashmiri leaders and activists who have been demanding fundamental rights guaranteed to Kashmiris by the United Nations.
