APHC demands international probe into Chattisinghpora, other IIOJK massacres
International Day of Happiness loses meaning for Kashmiris
#ChattisinghporaMassacre
Srinagar: The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) has demanded investigation by international agencies into all massacres, including the mass murder of thirty-five members of Sikh community in Chattisinghpora area of Islamabad district in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
According to Kashmir Media Service, APHC spokesman Abdul Rashid Minhas in a statement issued in Srinagar on the 26th anniversary of the Sikh massacre said that Indian army and its agencies orchestrated the killing on the eve of the then US President, Bill Clinton’s visit to India to defame the Kashmir’s legitimate freedom movement among comity of nations.
It was on March 20, 2000, when Indian troops in disguise entered the Chattisinghpora village and killed the Sikhs to give an impression to the world that the carnage was carried out by Kashmiri mujahideen. Five days after the massacre, the Indian army arrested six innocent Kashmiris and killed them in a fake encounter at Pathribal and labeled them as foreign militants who, the Indian army blamed, were responsible for the Sikh massacre. However, investigation belied the Indian propaganda and confirmed that the killed youth were local villagers and were massacred to hide the Indian army’s heinous crime.
APHC deplored that the Chattisinghpora massacre’s anniversary coincided with the International Day of Happiness, today. The statement said that the day has lost its meaning for the people of occupied Jammu and Kashmir amid the ongoing spree of killings, arrests and crackdown operations in every nook and corner of the territory.
The Chattisinghpora massacre, as it transpired in the ensuing years, was meant to give a bad name to Kashmiris’ freedom struggle and it was an attempt to equate Kashmiris’ struggle for self-determination to terrorism.
IIOJK has witnessed many brutal massacres committed by Indian troops in the territory with an aim to shift the blame on freedom fighters to malign the freedom movement, both at home and abroad.
Today, the world is observing International Day of Happiness while the people of occupied Jammu and Kashmir continue to face pain and injustice under military siege woven around them with the presence of around one million Indian forces’ personnel in the territory.
