For Kashmiris in UK, amiable candidates main focus

Islamabad, Muzaffarabad urged to keep policies in line with wishes of Kashmiris

MUZAFFARABAD: With a strong, consolidated community – and thus a significant vote bank – Kashmiris living in England will go to polls next month with the aim of affecting the elections based on candidates who support the Kashmir cause.

“We will focus on candidates rather than parties, whether they are from Labour or Conservative,” said Tehreek-e-Kashmir United Kingdom (UK) President Raja Fahim while addressing a reception in Muzaffarabad organised by the Jamaat-e-Islami Azad Jammu and Kashmir chapter on Saturday.

“Our mission is to vote for the candidate who will support the Kashmiris’ right of self-determination.”

An engineering graduate from the University of Engineering and Technology (UET) Lahore, 36-year-old Fahim went to the UK in 2006. He worked for the promotion of Kashmir cause and soon rose in the ranks to be appointed as the president of TKUK – an organisation formed in 1985 which now has over a dozen branches spread across Europe to promote Kashmir cause.

Fahim said that in the UK, where there are over 1.2 million Kashmiris, they could play a decisive role in June’s election.

He added that they had also gathered some momentum in this regard when thousands of overseas Kashmiris gathered in November 2015 to protest against Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi who addressed the Indian diaspora at the Wembley Stadium in London despite the fact that it was a weekend.

“It sent a strong message to the world community that Indian leaders had no humanity-loving record,” Fahim noted.

Moreover, the TKUK chief said that they were also able to garner support from English lawmakers.

“More than 100 UK parliament members signed a petition by TKUK to support the Kashmir cause and the MPs assured that they would oppose any bid to make India permanent member of security council till the final settlement of Kashmir,”
Fahim added.

Further, in Europe, he said that Pakistanis and Kashmiris have a strong voice. If they united, the whole world would support them on the Kashmir dispute.

He added that Kashmiris living in the UK and other European countries want a national policy from Islamabad on the Kashmir dispute. However, he warned that should any government in Islamabad think along the lines of dividing Kashmir or try to bypass the real voice of Kashmiris by settling the dispute as per their own wishes, it would not be accepted by the Kashmiris living abroad or across the Line of Control (LoC) and would be seen as a betrayal.

The TKUK president also hailed leaders in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) for their undaunted commitment to the Kashmir cause.

He condemned the silence of the AJK government over the rising human rights violations in IoK and urged the ruling elite of AJK to mobilise the public to extend support to the people of IoK.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 1^st, 2017.