The cost of a 70-year-long power struggle
KARACHI: This is in response to Imran Khan’s article titled ‘Apathy to suffering of Kashmiris on both sides’ published on March 24th. Imran Khan has rightly highlighted the plight of Kashmiris not just in Indian-Occupied Kashmir (IOK) but also those living in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) that rarely is ever highlighted in the mainstream media of Pakistan.
While there is no denying the fact that atrocities carried out in IOK are inhumane, but that doesn’t mean that there are absolutely no death tolls recorded in AJK, as people in AJK die in exchange of fire between the Indian and Pakistani armies at the Line of Control. It is time we stopped weighing atrocities in terms of the number of corpses. It shouldn’t matter if the death toll is one or a 100, the only thing that should matter is that humans are losing their lives — the cost of a 70-year-long power struggle.
Instead of blaming each other for the atrocities in Kashmir, the Indian and Pakistani establishment should sit together and devise plans to put an end to the bloodshed. Kashmiri people are losing their lives year after year and we need to act now and fast.
Mubashir Khalid Akram
Published in The Express Tribune, March 26th, 2018.
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