LAHORE, Oct 8: The Kashmir Action Committee Pakistan (KACP) has expressed concern over the present situation in held Kashmir and the ‘brutal’ action of the Indian army and security forces against the people of the Valley.

In a statement, KACP President Justice Syed Sharif Husain Bokhari (retired) said since June last the people of Kashmir en masse had renewed their struggle for freedom despite the use of brutish force by Indian army and security forces and clamping down curfews time and again with shoot-at-sight orders. From 1947 to 1989, the people of Kashmir struggled peacefully for their right to self-determination, which was guaranteed to them by the UN Security Council, India and Pakistan, he said.

After more than four decades of peaceful struggle the youth of Kashmir lost hope of achieving their right, they started militant struggle. The Indian army used brutish force to quell it and killed about hundred thousand people of Kashmir, mostly young, besides destroying the properties of the people, molesting Muslim women, young and old, and incarcerating thousands Kashmiri Muslims.

He said the current freedom movement was completely indigenous, which gave surprise to leaders of Kashmir, India and Pakistan. It was also a peaceful and self-organised movement, forcing the leaders to follow the masses. However, Indian claim of democracy and the norms of civilised behaviour vanished for the people of Kashmir when the government issued license to its army and security forces to ‘shoot-at-sight’ against all norms of civilised society besides against the Universal Declaration of the Human Rights and even India's own constitution. He said the people of Kashmir had been demanding their right to freedom and self-determination as enshrined in the UN Charter in a peaceful manner.

He said the right to govern and to be governed belonged to the people. When these rights are denied to the people in terms of the preamble of the UN HR Declaration, it is the right of the people “to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, so that human rights should be protected by the rule of law”.