MUZAFFARABAD: Jamaat-i-Islami Emir Sirajul Haq said on Thursday that US President Barack Obama’s visit to India and his support to India’s bid for UN Security Council’s membership amounted to contempt of democracy and human rights.

“Friendship with India at the cost of Kashmir is a blatant disregard and disrespect to democracy. The so-called champions of human rights and democracy have abused their own proclamations,” he said at a gathering on the premises of district headquarters complex here.

The event, organised by JIAJK to mark Kashmir Solidarity Day, was presided over by JIAJK Emir Abdul Rashid Turabi and addressed by several leaders and representatives of various political parties.

Mr Haq said that after Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif decided to express solidarity with Kashmiris through his speech at the special joint session of the AJK Legislative Assembly and Council, he made up his mind to address a ‘public assembly’ in Muzaffarabad.

He said people of India-held Kashmir were in fact fighting the war of Pakistan’s security and warned that Islamabad’s slightest deviation from Kashmir freedom struggle would be tantamount to committing betrayal not only with the ideology of Pakistan but also with the blood of martyrs. He pointed out that India had been constantly conspiring to destabilise Pakistan and water terrorism on her part was one of those evil actions.

Mr Haq, who belongs to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, recalled that the tribal people had played a key role in 1947 for freedom of their Kashmiri brethren, and added that they were ready, even today, to extend similar support.

Earlier, Mr Haq was accorded warm welcome at Kohala Bridge, where he joined people from AJK and adjoining areas of Punjab and KP forming a symbolic human chain to exhibit bonds of brotherhood between the Kashmiris and Pakistan.

Similar chains were formed at Bararkot, Azad Pattan, Tain-Dhalkot Bharing, Holaar, Mangla and some other points marking AJK’s border with Pakistan.

Elsewhere, joint and separate rallies and demonstrations were held under the aegis of different organisations to express solidarity with the struggling Kashmiris in India-held Kashmir.

Published in Dawn, February 6th, 2015

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