Kashmiris indispensable stakeholder in decision about future: AJK president

Sardar Masood Khan says world; especially US must take notice of gross human rights violations in IoK

WASHINGTON DC: President Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Sardar Masood Khan has said that the human rights violations being perpetrated against the people of IoK must not be seen through the prism of regional politics. Besides India and Pakistan, the people of Kashmir were an indispensable stakeholder in any decision on their future.



Speaking to South Asian experts on Wednesday at the Middle East Institute, he said serious efforts must be made to find a lasting solution to the Kashmir dispute.

Khan said the United Nations (UN) carried the solemn responsibility of implementing the UNSC resolutions on Kashmir.

Responding to a question related to the UNSC resolutions on Kashmir, he said India was already in violation of its obligations to the UN. Khan underscored that the whole process of finding a solution to the Kashmir dispute was anchored in the UNSC resolutions.

AJK president pointed out that in addition to the coercive state machinery; political forces backed by the ruling party in IoK were also terrorising the Kashmiris. In this regard, he added, India’s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) was planning to create a mass exodus of Muslims from the disputed valley to achieve a favourable demographic outlay in the area, along with the lines of the genocide of 237,000 Muslims in 1947.

However, Khan reiterated that the people of Kashmir would never compromise on their political aspirations.

He informed the experts that India's vicious policy of unleashing state coercion on innocent Kashmiris bordered on crimes against humanity.

Political expediency and mercantilism must not hold back responsible powers from their moral, political and legal obligation of responding to the well recorded and widely reported incidents of massive human rights violations in IoK, Khan emphasised.

India, the AJK president said, was not only responsible for tormenting the lives of Kashmiris through acts of killing and torture but it was also blackmailing key western nations on the basis of its so-called strategic and economic leverages.



He said that ignoring Indian atrocities would amount to acquiescing to its policy of state coercion as regularly displayed through brutalities perpetrated against the people of the IoK. Khan said India had also misled the world by framing the Kashmir issue in the context of terrorism.

There was no terrorism in Kashmir, Khan added and highlighted that the predominant reality in the occupied valley was the mass killing of the innocent Kashmiris.