MUZAFFARABAD: Scores of women staged a demonstration here on Monday to draw global attention to the plight of women in India-held Kashmir as the international community celebrated social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women on a day dedicated to them.

Separately, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan and Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider also attended two different events in the town to mark the day.

The demonstrators first staged a sit-in along a busy thoroughfare near Burhan Wani Chowk from where they marched up to Garhi Pan Chowk amid loud pro-freedom and anti-India chants.

They were holding banners and placards inscribed with slogans about the appalling condition of women in the Indian occupied territory, including those languishing in different Indian prisons.

AJK president, PM attend events organised to mark women’s day

“Kashmiri women seek their rights on International Women’s Day,” read a big banner with images of wailing and detained Kashmiri women.

Speaking on the occasion, the demonstrators called upon the United Nations to take some tangible measures to ensure a peaceful environment for Kashmiri women who were the worst victims of the conflict that lingered because of India’s aggression and intransigence.

They regretted that the UN and the world community were not forcefully speaking against the Indian government for making the lives of Kashmiri women miserable.

Uzair Ahmed Ghazali, chairman of Pasban-i-Hurriyat, an organisation of post-1990 migrants from India-held Kashmir which had organised the event, told reporters on the occasion that Indian forces had molested 9,500 Kashmiri women over the past three decades.

“Indian army has disappeared more than 2,200 married men and their spouses are living the lives of half-widows,” he said, stressing that the international community and human rights watchdogs should hold the terrorist state of India accountable for its war crimes, particularly against women, in occupied Kashmir.

They also torched an Indian flag to express indignation against the atrocities being perpetrated by the Indian army in occupied Kashmir.

Meanwhile, speaking to a 70-member delegation of Air War College of Pakistan Air Force here, the AJK president said that thousands of women in occupied Kashmir were suffering immensely due to the illegal occupation of their motherland.

“Sisters have died while saving their siblings, young wives have suffered defending their husbands and mothers have taken their last breath longing for their missing sons,” he said.

He called upon the international community to put pressure on India that the psychological trauma faced by ‘half-widows’ should come to an end.

In his address at a function under the aegis of the women development department, Prime Minister Haider paid glowing tribute to the women in occupied Kashmir for their unprecedented sacrifices for the liberation of their motherland.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2021