KL NEWS NETWORK
SRINAGAR
Raising vociferous “anti-India” slogans and waving placards, hundreds of Kashmiri and international community members Monday staged a demonstration in front of the United Nations building to condemn the killings in Kashmir to push the U N to implements its resolutions as India’s External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj addressed the General Assembly.
A group of Sikhs joined the rally on a sunny day in New York which also demanded self-determination for the Sikhs as well as for the Kashmiri people, reports said.
All Kashmiri parties based in New York and the surrounding areas came together to voice their outrage over the killings since July 08, 2016.
At least 100 civilians and over 13500 others were wounded of whom 1o0 people were blinded by the use of gun pellets by in last eighty one days.
The demonstrators carried photographs of Kashmiri youth injured by pellets and condemned the use of deadly force against peaceful demonstrators.
“India: Out of Kashmir”, “We Want Freedom From India”, Wake Up, Wake Up– UN”, “Kashmir: Nuclear Flashpoint” and “India: End Bloodshed” were some of the placards the protesters were holding.
Speakers at the rally strongly condemned the killing spree in Kashmir and called on the world powers and the United Nations to use their “influence on India to the stop the genocide”.
“They also voiced grave concern over the shutdown of media offices in Kashmir and cutting off all communication links with the state, saying it was a grave violation of human rights and freedom of information,” the report added.
The speakers on the occasion, included prominent Kashmiri leaders like Barrister Sultan Mehmood Chaudhry, Ghulam Nabi Fai, Capt (r) Shaheen Butt and Sardar Sawar Khan, asked United Nations to allow the Kashmiri people to decide their future in order to pave the way for peace and stability in the sub-continent.
Barrister Chaudhry said, “the Kashmiri struggle had reached a decisive moment as he called for complete unity among Kashmiri people. The freedom was not far off.”
“There can be no peace in the region without the resolution of Kashmir dispute,” Fai said.
“The most poignant aspect of the situation is the acute suffering of the whole population caused by indefinite curfews in disregard of normal life as well as detention of the Kashmiri leadership,” he said. “This is a situation without precedent in South Asian subcontinent and few parallels in the whole world.”
Dr Ghulam Nabi Mir regretted that the Security Council was paying inadequate attention, while “Indian soldiers were maiming and massacring people in cities, towns and villages of Kashmir”.
“The valiant people of Kashmir are doing what they can and what they must – they are taking to the streets in defiance of the barbaric laws of the centre and its handpicked puppets in Srinagar,” he added.
Sardar Sawar Khan told the protestors that a “systematic campaign of terror had been launched against the people of Kashmir”.
“A deliberate targeting of youth with the intent to crush the movement should be of grave concern to leaders of the civilized nations, including the UN,” he said.
He called for implementing U N resolutions on Kashmir, saying their “struggle for freedom will not stop until the resolution of decades-old dispute”.
Captain (r) Shaheen Butt drew attention to reports of the entire population of major towns in the Valley of Kashmir, defying curfews, coming out the streets with the demand for a speedy implementation of the pledge solemnly extended to them by India and Pakistan and the UN.
Notably, the resistance leadership had asked NRKs and their friends to hold protests in favour of Kashmiris outside UN headquarters on September 26, 2016.
Meanwhile, more than a hundred Non-Resident Kashmiris (NRKs) and other human rights activists of Houston, Texas, United States staged a peaceful protest outside the Indian Consulate, Houston located at 4300 Scotland Street on Friday, September 23.
The protesters advocating peace and justice for Kashmiris, sought to remind the Government of India of its obligations under international law to uphold the human rights of the people of Kashmir, who once more have been subject to a wave of “State terror through intimidation and violence by Indian armed forces” following the protests that erupted across Kashmir after the killing of Burhan Wani on July 8.
The protesters demanded that the Government of India end their “brutal suppression” of unarmed protestors that has so far resulted in 89 people, predominantly youth, being killed and 11,500 injured at the hands of forces.
They also demanded that the government stop the “barbaric” practice of using pellet shot guns to disperse protestors that has so far blinded 800 people, including 300 who are totally blinded in both eyes.
The protestors vociferously demanded the release of Khurram Pervez, a human rights activist, who has been illegally detained by the Indian government while attempting to travel to the United Nations Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva to expose the “crimes perpetrated by the Indian armed forces against Kashmiris.”
