Afridi urges UN to stop depiction of cantonments in Held Valley

ISLAMABAD: Chairman Special Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir, Shehryar Khan Afridi has strongly denounced the Indian occupation regime for enacting new laws to enable illegal military cantonments in the disputed area of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IoK) and urged United Nations to take action to stop this illegal process.
Addressing a seminar here at National Press Club on Sunday, organised to mark Kashmir Accession Day, Shehryar Afridi said the new laws are a part of Indian plan to bring demographic changes in the IoK in a bid to artificially turn Muslim-dominated Kashmir into a Hindu-majority territory.
He said that the government of Pakistan while upholding its principled position continues to provide political and diplomatic support to the Kashmiris. He said while Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control and around the world are celebrating Pakistan Accession Day, Indian occupation forces are inflicting innumerable atrocities in the Indian Occupied Kashmir, and the unarmed Kashmiri people are fighting the dangerous weapons of the Indian-occupying army with mere stones.
He said this is a nefarious design cooked up to violate the United Nations Security Council resolutions. The world needs to act now.
Afridi said under this sinister design, thousands of Indian labourers have been brought for construction near the army cantonment.
He said that India is violating international law by settling Indians in the UN-recognized disputed territory. The world must take note and warn India of its implications in the region, he demanded.
Afridi said the UN must pursue its own resolutions on Kashmir to hold a plebiscite in the occupied territory, failing which it would lead the UN towards the fate of the League of Nations.
He said like Darfur (South Sudan) and East Timor, Kashmiris should be given the right to vote to decide their political future, as promised by the United Nations. But the United Nations and the international community continue to turn a blind eye to the Kashmir issue.
Addressing the seminar, President Azad Jammu and Kashmir Sardar Masood Khan said that India is committing ceasefire violations (CFVs) to divert the world attention from its brutalities in occupied Jammu and Kashmir. He said India is systemically bringing demographic changes in the occupied valley.
The President AJK said that Kashmiris have been sacrificing since the rule of the Dogra dynasty. He said it was the people of Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan who fought for their independence.
Sardar Masood Khan called for making the efforts more effective to highlight the Kashmir issue. He urged the civil society to start a campaign to get Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh declared as a terrorist organization and impose economic sanctions against India. – TLTP