WASHINGTON, Aug 31: Speakers in Chicago at a four-day Islamic conference condemned India on Sunday for exploiting the current resentment against terrorism to suppress the Kashmiri struggle for the right to self-determination.

The conflict in Kashmir is over broken promises and the denial of basic rights. It is not a religious issue, said Edward Hasbrouk of a San Francisco-based rights advocacy group, the Non-Violent Resistance.

The discussion on Kashmir, held at the Islamic Society of North America’s (ISNA) annual convention, focused mainly on human rights violations in the valley and the atrocities committed by the Indian security forces. But the speakers also warned that the Kashmir dispute could lead the South Asian region to a nuclear holocaust if it remained unresolved.

Dr Ayyub Thuker, president of the London-based World Kashmiri Freedom Movement, reminded the audience that India forced Pakistan to conduct retaliatory tests by testing its nuclear devices first.

After the tests, India’s Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani posed a direct threat to Pakistan’s integrity when he said that India was in a position to change the geography of the region.

Mr Thuker said had Pakistan failed to match the Indian nuclear tests, people like Advani could have tried to redraw the Subcontinent’s map by force.

Mr Hasbrouk said the current struggle for freedom had just started when he visited Kashmir in 1989 and saw thousands of people marching in the streets of Srinagar demanding their right to self-determination.

He said it was wrong to describe the Kashmiri struggle as a separatist movement because Kashmir was never a part of India and was recognized by the United Nations as a disputed territory.

Dr Faroque A. Khan, a member of the ISNA’s consultative council, said that when he was growing up in Kashmir in the 1970s, he was so used to seeing troops in the streets that he was surprised when he saw no troops in New Delhi and Bombay.

In the last 10 years, India has sent an excessive number of troops to Kashmir to crush the Kashmiri people, he said. But there is no need for this display of force. All we want is for India and Pakistan to give us the right to self-determination as required by the relevant UN resolutions on the issue.

Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, who heads the Washington-based Kashmir American Council, said it was far from the truth to call the Kashmiri struggle a fundamentalist movement. Kashmir, he said, has long-standing traditions of religious tolerance and respect for all faiths. Since 1948, when India annexed Kashmir, several prominent Hindu leaders have opposed the annexation.

Hindus and Muslims, he said, have always lived peacefully in Kashmir.