Geneva, September 14, 2023 (PPI-OT): Kashmiri representative Altaf Hussain Wani has urged the UN Human Rights Council to take effective cognisance of the colonial-era tactics India’s repressive regime led by Modi has been employing to subjugate the Kashmiri people in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
Taking part in a general debate held under Item 2 at the 54th session of the UNited Nations Human Rights Council, Altaf Wani said that India has been using its military might to suppress the legitimate aspirations of the people of Kashmir. Highlighting the devastating impact of the continued military occupation, he said that the deadly conflict has consumed nearly a hundred thousand lives during the past 34 years.
He said New Delhi has employed repressive policies to crush every kind of dissent in the occupied territory, adding the people in Kashmir face sedition charges and are being booked under draconian laws for merely asking for their right to self-determination to determine their political future. He said that essential fundamental freedoms, including the right to freedom of speech and opinion, the right to protest and peaceful assembly remain largely suppressed. The media, he said, has been completely silenced in the region.
Referring to India’s policy of deceit and deception, Wani said that India was using every international platform to mislead the global community and hide the crimes its forces’ personnel have been committing against humanity in Kashmir.
Wani said that if everything was normal in Kashmir, then why India doesn’t allow the UN fact-finding mission to visit the occupied territory as recommended by the OHCHR report released in 2018. Urging the council to revisit its understanding of the situation in IIOJK, he said that it was high time that the council to take a bold stand and release a full report on the situation in IIOJK.
Speaking in the general debate, another Kashmiri representative Shamim Shawl while expressing concern over the grave human rights violations in IIOJK expressed the hope that the UN Human Rights Council would thoroughly deliberate on the existing grim situation in the occupied territory.
She maintained the challenges on the ground in this conflict area are multiplying day by day, adding the Modi regime is changing the demographic composition of IIOJK where fundamental freedoms and basic rights have been suspended. She lamented that entire political leadership has been put behind bars and they have been denied the right to a fair trial. Shamim Shwal said that the right to self-determination promised to the people of IIOJK has not been fulfilled despite the passage of over seven decades.
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