British Lord backs Kashmiris' rights

ISLAMABAD (Pakistan Point News - 18th Nov, 2019) Describing the situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir as “looming humanitarian crisis and danger to international peace and stability” member of UK House of Lords, Lord Duncan McNair has said that people of Kashmir need to have the opportunity to decide their future in line with United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Lord Duncan McNair, also Executive Committee Member of the Council of Human Rights and Religious Freedom is currently leading a UK delegation expressed these views while talking to media after a meeting with the AJK President Sardar Masood Khan here on Monday.

On this occasion, Sardar Masood Khan said that India was finding new political puppets in occupied Kashmir to show to the world that the Kashmiris are with India so as to endorse its aggressive actions.

"As many as 107 days have passed since India has imposed curfew and laid siege on occupied Kashmir, and during this period, the Indian army has arrested thousands of citizens including Kashmiri leaders, and under the garb of so-called house searches, the most inhuman treatment is meted out to the youth of Kashmir," he added.

The AJK president said that India's action of October 31 under which the state was bifurcated, and the whole of the occupied territory was turned into an Indian colony was not only a violation of the international law and the UN resolutions but under the Geneva convention, it is a war crime as well.

He called upon the UN Security Council to give up its criminal silence, and stop India from the ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri people.

It should enhance pressure on India to avert the looming dangers of catastrophic war due to Indian actions, and set up an international commission of inquiry to examine the worst human rights situation in the held territory.

Sardar Masood Khan urged the UK to help convene a session of the UN Security Council as its permanent member, and play a leadership role to secure an end to inhuman Indian actions against the Kashmiri people. The political parties of the UK should also make Kashmir issue a part of their electoral campaign, he added.

On this occasion, Lord Duncan McNair said that the people of Jammu and Kashmir should be granted the right to determine their future in accordance with the UN resolutions, and the human rights violations in the held territory should immediately cease.

Member of Amnesty International Barrister Rashid Ahmad and member of Pakistan Club UK Raja Shiraz Akhtar Advocate, who are also part of the visiting delegation, said that the Kashmiri people were not alone in their just struggle, but all conscientious people of the world stand by them.

They observed that through its silence over the precarious situation of occupied Kashmir, the United Nations has told the world that it has failed in fulfilling its global responsibilities.

They called upon the UN Security Council to condemn India for perpetrating brutalities against the Kashmiri people because until and unless human rights trampling does not cease, no region of the world was safe.