Geneva, September 29, 2022 (PPI-OT):Speakers at a seminar hosted by Community Human Rights and Advocacy Center have said that the India’s RSS influenced regime led by Narendra Modi was pursuing Israeli model of demographic engineering in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir to turn Muslim majority into a minority.
The seminar titled “Demographic Engineering in Indian occupied Kashmir: Violation of International Law and UNSC Resolutions” was attended and addressed by the international law experts, rights activists and political activists hailing from different parts of the world including veteran human rights activist Mousie Wahabudin; Chairman Kashmir Institute of International Relations, Altaf Hussain Wani; Kashmiri leader Advocate Pervaiz Shah; and Muzammil Ayoob Thakur, president Kashmir Freedom Movement.
Speakers while underling the devastating impacts of the prolonged military occupation of Jammu and Kashmir by India said that the Indian government’s systematic campaign aimed at bringing material change in the occupied territory was in complete violation of the UN Security Council’s resolutions and the Geneva Convention.
Referring to the Indian government’s unilateral actions it has 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 5th August 2019, Modi regime enacted a regime of new laws that provided an impetus to the BJP’s policies aimed at altering the demography of the disputed territory.
“Annulment of the 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 settle in the region”, they said, adding that the repealing of Articles 370 and 35-A has been the right-wing Hindu supremacists’ dream project, which was ultimately executed and implemented by Modi-the front man of the RSS.
Referring to sweeping changes made in the Jammu and Kashmir’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. They said that the policy was akin to Israel’s model of occupation of Palestine.
Speaking at length on demographic changes in the IIOJK, they said that establishing separate housing colonies of Pandits and Indian soldiers in the Kashmir valley were 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 said that changing the electoral map of the territory and now granting voting rights to outsiders speak 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 the 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.
Stressing the need for holding the Indian government accountable of the war crimes it has been committing against Kashmiris, the speakers argued that the slow-motion genocide and attempts to change the region’s demography by the Indian government constitute war crimes.
They said that since Kashmiris were facing a serious existential threat there was a dire need that the world should come to their rescue and play its role to help them achieve their cherished goal of freedom by allowing them to exercise their right, the right to self-determination guaranteed to them by the international community.
For more information, contact:
Kashmir Media Service
Phone: +92-51-4435548, +92-51-4435549
Fax: +92-51-4861736
Email: info@kmsnews.org
Website: www.kmsnews.org