Islamabad, August 02, 2023 (PPI-OT): Senior APHC-AJK leader Muhammad Farooq Rehmani while condemning India’s decision to abrogate IIOJK’s special status and imposition of central laws has urged the United Nations to compel New Delhi to withdraw its 5 August 2019 decision which goes contrary to the UN Charter and the Security Council resolutions regarding plebiscite to ascertain the wishes of the people.

Farooq Rehmani in a statement issued in Islamabad said that India had been taking illegal and unilateral steps since 2019, against the wishes of the inhabitants of IIOJK, agreements with Pakistan and the international law to change the demography, culture and religious identity of Muslim majority Jammu and Kashmir. He said that the illegally occupied territory had been turned into a horrible security zone with military, police and surveillance agencies violating human rights of the people and dictating on them their terms against their will and aspirations.

He said not only Kashmiri politicians and civilians but human rights activists had been put behind bars in thousands, adding the parents of the detained people had been deprived of meeting their relatives in jails. He stated that the authorities were taking into their control the mosques and shrines, and prayer Imams and Khateebs were not allowed to deliver religious sermons during the prayer meetings. He lamented that the occupied territory had become a prohibited area where courts and judges do issue judgments in accordance with the dictates of the political and military establishment of India.

The APHC-AJK leader maintained that every proclamation after 5 August 2019 having no moral and legal sanctity had been rejected by the Kashmiri people. It is now the duty of the United Nations to intervene and facilitate necessary dialogue between the stakeholders to resolve the dispute over Kashmir peacefully in line with the relevant resolutions of the world body, Farooq Rehmani added.

He called upon the Kashmiri people to observe August 5 as black day to make it once again known to the international community that they reject India’s illegal occupation of their motherland and will not rest till attaining freedom from its slavery.

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