President pays tribute to martyrs of Jammu
Islamabad: President Asif Ali Zardari has paid tribute to the martyrs of Jammu, reaffirming Pakistan’s unwavering support for the people of Jammu and Kashmir in their just struggle for self-determination.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the president in his message on Youm-e-Shuhada-e-Jammu (Jammu Martyrs’ Day) said, “We call upon the international community and the United Nations to recognise the Jammu massacre as genocide and to hold India accountable for its continuing violations of international law, including its attempts to alter the demographic composition of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) in contravention of the Geneva Conventions”.
On this day in 1947, he said the forces of the Hindu Dogra Maharaja, aided by RSS extremists and armed bands from Patiala and Kapurthala, carried out one of the worst massacres in the history of the subcontinent.
Over 200,000 Muslims were killed and more than half a million fled to areas around Sialkot after the Jammu massacre. In a matter of weeks, the tragedy of 6 November 1947 changed the demography of Jammu forever, turning a Muslim-majority region into a minority through systematic ethnic cleansing.
President Zardari said the massacre in Jammu stands as one of the darkest chapters of modern history. While the world remembers other great human tragedies, the genocide of Kashmiri Muslims in 1947 has never received the recognition it deserves. The scale of brutality was staggering, with entire villages wiped out and families torn apart.
