India wants to 'terrorise Kashmiris': World Sikh Parliament

Condemns New Delhi stripping IOK's special status

The World Sikh Parliament (WSP), to represent Sikh interests on the world stage, has not only condemned New Delhi's move to revoke Indian Occupied Kashmir's (IOK's) special status but has deemed it as an attempt to "terrorise Kashmiris."

According to a statement released by the organisation, the Indian move has been unreservedly condemned.

"This is a brazen attempt to override international law and democratic legitimacy by unilaterally purporting to divide and annex Kashmir," it said.

"These moves by New Delhi were overseen by a massive military build-up aimed at terrorising the very people whose destiny, like that of the Sikhs in recent decades, is being stolen by a Hindutva agenda bent on creating a Hindu state extending well in to the territories of neighbouring national homelands."

The organisation was of the view that the Indian government's steps were taken with no attempt to engage with Kashmiris or the United Nations.

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It said the UN had underlined India’s record as a serial violator of fundamental human rights.

"Having experienced the same pattern of betrayal – Sikhs were promised a national homeland in independent India only to be denied even recognition as a nation as well as a distinct religion post 1947 – we now also apprehend a massive military crackdown of genocidal proportions in Kashmir, as was used to suppress the Sikh self-determination struggle in the decade after India’s invasion of Punjab in June 1984," the communique read.

The organisation called for the international community to urgently intervene to prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of Kashmiri non-combatants at the hands of the Indian regime.

The group said that it was time world powers realise that the right-wing agenda in India is quickly paving the way to further military conflict with not only Pakistan but China.

"Both neighbouring states have warned India that its Article 370 abrogation and ‘union territory’ annexation moves are not only illegal but constitute a direct challenge to their own longstanding territorial claims."

The WSP said that the prospect of these three nuclear armed powers turning to full scale war to "resolve" the crisis is both real and alarming.

It also pointed out that such a conflict would devastate the Sikh homeland in Indian Punjab.