ISLAMABAD: Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir Chairman Shehryar Khan Afridi on Wednesday paid glowing tributes to Kashmiri mothers, sisters and daughters braving the onslaught of Indian occupation forces.

Speaking at a special in-camera session of the committee on the eve of Kashmiri Women’s Resistance Day, Shehryar Afridi said on the night of Feb 23, 1991, the Rashtriya Rifles committed a mass rape of Kashmiri women in Kunan Poshpora which was a reflection of India’s genocidal design in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Senior Minister Azad Jammu and Kashmir Sardar Tanvir Ilyas, Secretary Ministry of Narcotics Control Syed Kaleem Imam, Secretary Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and Gilgit-Baltistan Sher Alam Mehsud, Director General Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Lt Gen Babar Iftikhar, Additional Secretary Ministry of Defence Maj Gen Khurram Sarfraz Khan, Additional Secretary MoFA Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, APHC convener Syed Faiz Naqshbandi, Kashmir Premier League President Arif Malik and Chief Executive Officer Shehzad Chaudhry, President Canada-Pakistan Global Congress Chaudhry Zafar Iqbal and others attended.

“It is an irony that despite a lapse of 31 long years, the world’s human rights organisations and international government organisations (IGOs) and states have failed to conduct an investigation into the mass rapes and punish those responsible,” said the Kashmir Committee chairman.

Mr Afridi emphasised that Kashmiris lives and dignity matter and the international community shall intervene to stop the genocide of Kashmiri people.

He said any nation had a commitment to the human rights laws and since Kashmir was pending with the United Nations Security Council, it was the responsibility and obligation of all member states to uphold the human rights of the Kashmiri people.

He said human rights was the fundamental basic right and not a derivative right so it was the responsibility of the United Nations Human Rights Council to investigate the Kunan Poshpora mass rape as a case study and bring the culprits to justice. He said the committee would form a four-member subcommittee to take up and investigate the discrimination and maltreatment being meted out to the Pakistani and Kashmiri diaspora in the United Kingdom and the committee would then help raise it with the UN government.

The committee also offered fateha for the solace of the soul of the Kashmiri martyrs, the martyrs of the armed forces and paramilitary forces, Senator Rehman Malik and other Pakistanis who died in the line of duty.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2022