MUZAFFARABAD: A rally and several other events were held in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) on Sunday on the occasion of ‘International Human Rights Day’ to draw attention towards unchecked crimes against humanity in different parts of the world, particularly the Indian and Israeli-occupied territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Palestine.

Participants in the events lamented that the United Nations (UN) as an institution and its permanent five members as big powers were either keeping mum about harrowing violations of human rights or, in some cases, brazenly standing by the tyrannical regimes just because of their economic and political interests.

In Muzaffarabad, hundreds of men, women and young children took part in a rally under the aegis of two organisations of post-1989 migrants from Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

“Where are the rights of the Jammu and Kashmir and Palestinian people,” read one of the banners held by the participants, many of whom were also waving black as well as the flags of Pakistan, Azad Kashmir and Palestine.

While parading from Sathra Mor to Garhipan Chowk, participants kept on shouting emotional slogans against the brute Indian government and its forces.

“The violations committed by the Indian troops in occupied Jammu and Kashmir over the past 76 years in general and after the abrogation of the special status of the occupied territory are harrowing and amount to crimes against humanity,” said one of the organisers, Uzair Ahmed Ghazali.

He said ever since the launch of the freedom struggle in 1989, India has martyred more than 100,000 citizens in Jammu and Kashmir.

“Indian soldiers have abducted 11,000 Kashmiri civilians from their homes who were later martyred in fake encounters and torture camps and buried in mass graves over the past three decades,” he added.

Mr Ghazali and other participants regretted that the world was playing the role of a silent spectator against Indian state terrorism in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

They also vehemently condemned Israeli brutality in Gaza and said the martyrdom of 18,000 innocent citizens, mostly children, in Gaza over the past two months was a slap in the face of the so-called human rights champions.

The declarations and covenants on human rights would remain just hollow words until the known violators of human rights, such as Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu, whose hands are stained with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Muslims, are reined in and brought to justice, they said.

At a separate event, AJK’s minister for law, justice and human rights Mian Abdul Waheed, along with renowned social and political activists Khadija Zareen Khan and Naila Altaf Kayani, highlighted the systematic and willful violations of the rights of Kashmiris by India’s fascist regime.

“In South Asia, the fascist Indian state illegally landed troops and occupied a major part of our motherland 76 years ago but also pledged to grant the Kashmiri people their right to self-determination,” the law minister said.

“Ironically, not only did India defiantly renege on those promises, but it also made the lives of the Kashmiri people miserable by depriving them of all their basic human rights, guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the allied covenants that India has signed and ratified, respectively,” he added.

Ms Khan and Ms Kayani particularly drew attention to the plight of Kashmiri women, many of whom had also been incarcerated under draconian laws, and urged global human rights watchdogs to take practical steps to help them breathe in free air.

In a statement on Human Rights Day, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) renewed its appeals to the international community to “break its criminal silence” over the continued human rights violations and systematic state terrorism in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Published in Dawn, December 11th, 2023