Kashmir, Pakistan are inseparable: President AJK

WASHINGTON: President Azad Jammu and Kashmir Sardar Masood Khan said that Pakistan is incomplete without Kashmir.

Kashmir has its identity rooted in Pakistan - the two are inseparable, said Sardar Masood while addressing a gathering of Pakistani American community at the Pakistan Embassy, Washington DC.

Masood, who is on a visit to the United States, urged the international community to call upon Indian occupation forces to cease violence and bloodshed in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

He remarked that the world must strongly condemn the brutalities perpetrated by Indian security forces in the Kashmir valley.

The voice of the Kashmiri people would never be suppressed as the next generation of Kashmiris have taken it upon themselves to secure their freedom from Indian oppression, he said.

President Masood Khan lauded the services of the Kashmiri diaspora, both within the United States as well as other parts of the world for keeping the Kashmir issue alive. He said India will have no choice but to heed to the demands of the Kashmiris, whose sacrifices will never go waste.

‘Human rights violation in IoK must end’

While addressing a forum organised by the Atlantic Council in Washington on Tuesday, Sardar Masood said that massive human rights violations should come to an end in Indian occupied Kashmir.

Masood said that there can be no peace in South Asia until the dispute of Jammu and Kashmir was resolved.

Responding to a question, President Masood Khan said that the international community should step forward to stop ongoing crimes against humanity in IoK.

India had used real politik and the promise of economic deals to impose a virtual “gag order” on key Western capitals from speaking out against the atrocities being committed by the Indian occupation forces in Kashmir, he added.

President Masood Khan invited the United States to play the role of a facilitator by bringing all the relevant parties to the peace table. Right now, he said, the reality was that there was total non-engagement between the parties to the dispute and unbridled repression by Indian occupation forces in the territory.

For Kashmiris, President Masood Khan said, Pakistan was the only “sovereign window” to the international community. While thanking Pakistan for its staunch diplomatic and political support to the Kashmiris, the AJK President said that Kashmiris from both sides – Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Indian occupied Kashmir – are also taking their narrative directly to the international community.

President Masood Khan said that there was no terrorism in Indian occupied Kashmir. The Kashmiris are waging a political struggle to win their freedom from India’s illegitimate rule.

India, the President said, was not only killing, torturing and maiming ordinary Kashmiris, but propagating a false narrative about their struggle by equating it with terrorism. Kashmiris do not want to be a flashpoint between Pakistan and India but a symbol of connectivity and cooperation.

“Kashmiris should not be treated as aliens in their homeland. It is their territory and they would decide their political future and the destiny of their state,” President Masood Khan stressed.

Responding to a series of questions, the AJK President said it was India, and not Pakistan, that was responsible for the non-implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions.

According to Resolution 98 of December 23, 1952, both India and Pakistan were required to proportionately reduce their troops simultaneously. But India had declined to fulfill its international obligation and, instead, propped up a dubious constituent assembly to hold rigged elections, thereby violating the UN Security Council resolutions.