India failing to buy off Kashmiris: Masood

Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan has said that successive Indian regimes over the decades "failed to buy off Kashmiris".

“During the last 73 years, the successive Indian regimes tested all repressive means, and also made lucrative offers to buy off the Kashmiri people, but the latter spurned all the offers with disdain and did not give up their just struggle, he said while addressing a ceremony on Friday to observe death anniversary of prominent Kashmir liberation movement leader Raisul Ahrar Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas.

The 53rd death anniversary of late prominent leader was observed in both AJK and Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) on Friday with the pledge to frustrate India's despicable plan to deprive the Kashmiris of their territory and to continue the struggle until every inch of Kashmir is liberated from the illegitimate Indian occupation.

The main ceremony to pay homage to Ghulam Abbas – one of the pioneers of the Kashmir liberation struggle – was held at his mausoleum at Faizabad near Rawalpindi.

The ceremony was attended by AJK Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider Khan, members of the state cabinet, Chief of All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference Sardar Attique Ahmed Khan, AJKMC President Shafiq Jarral, AJK Public Accounts Committee Chairman Abdur Rashid Turabi, members of the AJK Legislative Assembly and a large number of leaders and activists of the PML-N, AJKMC and other political parties.

A smartly turned contingent of the state police presented guard of honour followed by Quran Khawani and laying of a floral wreath on the grave of late Kashmiri leader by state president and prime minister.

Later in a statement, President Masood while paying rich tributes to Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas for his services to the liberation movement saying that India had occupied the region as an aggressor and invader.

The Kashmiris, he said, would never give up their struggle for liberation and right to self-determination and foil all Indian conspiracies and plans to turn Muslim-majority state into a Hindu state.

He said that India had planned to not only grab the land of Kashmiris but also to deprive them of their identity, language and culture in order to accomplish the Hindutva doctrine of BJP and the RSS.

On the pattern of Israeli repression in Palestine, India is poised to eliminate everything related to the economic, political, religious and culture of the Kashmiri Muslims.

“India is an illegal occupier of IIOJK, but not its owner. Ownership belongs to the people of Jammu and Kashmir,” he asserted and warned that attempts to stamp out Kashmiris’ languages and culture by the ruling BJP-RSS regime in the occupied territory would be opposed and resisted with tooth and nail.

Masood said that instead of adopting any apologetic policy, "we must warn the aggressor that it can no longer prolong its illegitimate occupation over Kashmir, and the day is not far off when the Kashmiri people will break the Indian shackles and breathe in the environment of freedom".

“Don’t be apologetic or evasive about your stance on IIOJK. Blare out a warning to the occupiers that their occupation won’t last, and that liberty would be emblazoned all over the occupied land soon.”

Referring to the Indian shelling on the defenceless people living along the Line of Control, the AJK president said that the international community particularly the United Nations should take notice of the tension along the LoC and the war-like situation created by India to divert the world attention from its brutalities and the worst human rights violations in occupied Kashmir.