India replicating Israeli model in Kashmir: speakers

Activists condemn measures in IIOJK in blatant violation of international laws

MIRPUR:

 

The speakers at a seminar hosted by Community Human Rights and Advocacy Centre in Geneva on Wednesday said that India's RSS-influenced regime led by Narendra Modi was pursuing the Israeli model of demographic engineering in Kashmir to turn the Muslim majority into a minority.

According to a handout issued on Thursday, the seminar titled "Demographic Engineering in Indian occupied Kashmir: Violation of International Law & UNSC Resolutions" was attended and addressed by international law experts, rights activists and political activists hailing from different parts of the world, including veteran human rights activist Mousie Wahabudin, KIIR Chairman Altaf Hussain Wani, Kashmiri leader Advocate Parvaiz Shah, Kashmir Freedom Movement President Muzamil Ayoub Thakur and others.

Speakers, while underlining the devastating impacts of the prolonged military of Kashmir by India, said that the Indian government's systematic campaign aimed at bringing material change in the held valley was in complete violation of the United Nations Security Council's resolutions and the Geneva Convention.

Referring to the Indian government's unilateral actions it had taken on Kashmir since 2019, they said that ripping Kashmir of its special status by abolishing Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian constitution had changed the entire dynamics of the Kashmir dispute.

Terming it as an atrocious assault on Kashmir's political and national identity, the speakers said that since August 5, 2019, the Modi regime enacted a new law that provided an impetus to the BJP's policies aimed at altering the demography of the disputed territory.

Annulment of Article 35-A, in particular, paved a way for the BJP to implement its agenda in Kashmir as revocation of the article virtually opened floodgates for non-Kashmiris to get them settled in the region, they said, adding that the repealing of Articles 370 and 35-A have been the right-wing Hindu supremacists' dream project, which was ultimately executed and implemented by Modi – the frontman of the RSS.

Referring to sweeping changes made in the state's domicile and other relevant land laws, they said that these laws were specially modified to encourage Hindus to settle in occupied Kashmir on a permanent basis.

Speaking at length on demographic changes in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), they said that establishing separate housing colonies of Pandits, Sanik colonies in the Kashmir valley was part of the BJP's settler colonialism policy.

These policies, they said, not only ran counter to international law and other human rights treaties but these actions were also in violation of the UNSC resolutions that strongly prohibit an occupying state from taking any unilateral decision that might undermine the status of a disputed territory.

They further said that changing the electoral map of the state and now granting voting rights to outsiders speaks volumes about the Indian government's malicious intentions to undermine the indigenous population's role in the political decision-making process.

The speakers said that on one hand Indian government has launched a massive multi-front political, cultural, and religious onslaught on Kashmiris while on the other, its forces have been involved in systematic genocide that has been going on unabated in Kashmir for the past several years.

They said that since Kashmiris were facing a serious existential threat there was a dire need that the world should come to the rescue of the Kashmiri people and play its role in helping Kashmiris achieve their cherished goal of freedom by allowing them to exercise their right to self-determination guaranteed to them by the international community.