MUZAFFARABAD: Dozens of young girls and civil society activists staged here on Thursday a demonstration condemning the rape and murder of an eight-year-old Muslim girl by Hindu men in India-held Kashmir earlier in January.

“Punish the killer of Kathua’s Asifa Bano,” read a big banner carried by some of the participants of the demonstration, organised by Jammu Kashmir Pasban-i-Hurriyat (JKPH), an organisation of post-1990 migrants from the India-held territory.

“The United Nations should take stock of Indian army’s atrocities on the children of Jammu and Kashmir, immediately,” added the same banner.

The girls, many of whom were wearing black headbands inscribed with ‘Justice for Asifa’, stood up in a circle during their silent protest at a bustling roundabout near the local press club named after slain Hizbul Mujahi­deen commander Burhan Wani.

JKPH chairman Uzair Ahmed Ghazali said that had the Indian government sentenced the people involved in the beastly act [of rape] in Kunan and Poshpora villages, Shopian district and other areas, innocent Asifa of Kathua would not have been brutally raped and murdered by Hindus.

“In fact, the Indian governments themselves have been encouraging and provoking the army personnel and other fanatics into using rape as a weapon of war,” he said.

Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf senior vice president and former AJK minister Khawaja Farooq Ahmed said India had crossed all limits of atrocities in held Kashmir and a further silence by the UN and international community could spell disaster for regional peace.

Condemning the attitude of the Jammu-based lawyers supporting the rapists and killers of Asifa, he said: “Across the world the legal fraternity stands for justice and human rights, but the attitude of Jammu bar has put this profession to shame.”

Mr Ahmed said India’s judiciary was also biased — a fact proven in the Afzal Guru case — and therefore perpetrators of all such heinous crimes should be tried in international war crime tribunals.

Prominent among other speakers were Shaikh Aqeelur Rehman of the Jamaat-i-Islami, Shaukat Javed Mir of the Pakistan Peoples Party, Ghulam Murtaza Gillani of the Muslim Conference, Noshad Ahmed Butt, Usman Ali, Shahnaz Qazi and Mehnaz Qureshi. However, no one from the ruling PML-N turned up at the demonstration, something one of the speakers also complained about.

“The [AJK] prime minister and many of his deputies can go to London to stage anti-India protests but why can’t they attend similar protests at the seat of their government,” said Noshad Ahmed Butt, a leader of the Kashmiri Refugees Council.

“The way you pull out people in political meetings, you should also bring your supporters to anti-India and pro-freedom rallies,” he added.

Published in Dawn, April 20th, 2018