ISLAMABAD, April 20: The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), Azad Kashmir chapter, on Tuesday held a protest demonstration in front of the Indian High Commission against , what they termed, the first phase of farcical elections in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

The demonstrators gathered outside the Foreign Office from where they marched towards the Indian High Commission. They were holding banners and chanting slogans against India and the human rights abuses carried out by 700,000 Indian troops.

The participants of the APHC rally, led by the acting convenor Pervez Ahmed, rejected the 'fake election drama' engineered by India and reiterated that these elections could not be a substitute to the UN-promised plebiscite.

On the occasion, speakers expressed their solidarity with those oppressed Kashmiris, who had been forced to cast their votes at gunpoint. They said: "India is using both mobile voters and mobile supporters to obtain votes and hoodwink the international community."

The leaders asked the UN and international community to urge India to stop human rights violations in Occupied Kashmir and restore Kashmiris' right to self determination.

The APHC leaders, who participated in the rally, were Pervez Ahmed, Abbas Rizvi, Abdul Majid Malik, Adeel Mushtaq Wani, Dr Sheikh Waleed Rasool, Farooq Ahmed Wani, Ghulam Nabi Mir, Ishtiaq Hameed, Khadim Hussain, Mohammad Hussain Khateeb, Shaukat Hussain Bhat and Syed Muzaffar Hussain Shah.