ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Sunday called for immediate release of prominent religious scholars and all other Kashmiri prisoners illegally detained by India.

In a statement issued here, the Foreign Office strongly condemned arbitrary arrests and illegal detention of Maulana Abdul Rasheed Dawoodi, Maulana Mushtaq Ahmed Veeri and five members of Jamaat-i-Islami in India-held Kashmir by the Indian government and called for their immediate release.

“Pakistan calls for immediate release of these religious scholars and all other Kashmiri prisoners illegally detained by India. We also urge the international community to take note of the dangerously growing trajectory of Islamophobia in India, instigated at the behest of the BJP-RSS nexus, that is aimed at suppressing the Muslims of India, denying them space to freely practice their faith and attacking their places of worship,” the Foreign Office said.

It added that these deplorable actions only days ahead of the UN General Assembly session manifested India’s growing intransigence, and utter disregard for human rights and fundamental freedoms.

The statement said that these arrests had marked a new low in Indian occupation forces’ blatant and continued onslaught on the human rights of the innocent Kashmiris.

The FO said that the illegal detention of the Islamic scholars, while the true representatives of the Kashmiri people were already under Indian custody under fictitious cases and on fallacious grounds, was yet another Indian attempt to rob the Kashmiri people of their distinct religious and cultural identity.

“The reprehensible arrest of the Kashmiri Islamic scholars under the draconian Public Safety Act (PSA) that defies all international humanitarian laws and permits preventive detention for as many as two years without the need of any trial, is a deplorable preemptive step by the Indian authorities planning to illegally occupy the religiously significant Waqf Board’s properties,” it said.

The Foreign Office said that apprehensive of widespread protests and unrest in the face of such a malicious move, these scholars have not only been unjustifiably arrested but shifted from occupied Kashmir to a prison in the Hindu majority Jammu.

These politically motivated arrests were clearly meant to stifle the voice of the Muslims of India-held Kashmir and further marginalise them, the statement added.

Published in Dawn, September 19th, 2022