The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) has strongly criticized the Indian BJP government’s expansion of a settler colonial project in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).
According to Kashmir Media Service, APHC spokesman Advocate Abdul Rashid Minhas in a statement in Srinagar said that the BJP-led government’s actions, including torture, harassment, killings, fake encounters, arrests, house raids, and seizing of Kashmiri properties and sacking of local employees from their services, have intensified since the revocation of IIOJK’s special status on August 5, 2019. He lamented that Indian troops in occupied Kashmir were butchering Kashmiris to turn its Muslim majority into a minority
The statement said that the BJP government, along with its local administration in IIOJK, is aggressively expanding its settler colonial project by unlawfully confiscating and attaching properties of Kashmiris and settling non-locals in the occupied territory. He emphasized that these actions are aimed at breaking the Kashmiris’ resolve on the resolution of the Kashmir dispute.
Highlighting the widespread incarceration of Kashmiris under false charges, Minhas reaffirmed that the people of Kashmir continue to reject the illegal occupation of their motherland as Jammu and Kashmir has been recognized as a disputed territory by the UN and the World Body has passed several resolution in this respect.
The APHC spokesman reaffirmed the Kashmiri people’s determination to continue their peaceful struggle for the right to self-determination amidst ongoing hardships and human rights violations.
He urged India to abandon its military and communal policies in Kashmir and fulfill its commitment to grant Kashmiris their right to self-determination. The APHC appealed to the UN and world powers to intervene and address the humanitarian crisis in Kashmir by resolving the lingering dispute according to the relevant UN resolutions.—KMS