Demonstrationds To Be Held In IOK On Friday

Demonstrationds to be held in IOK on Friday

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 28th Jul, 2017 ) : Peaceful demonstrations will be held after Juma prayers to protest against the suspension of life sentences by a military court to five Indian soldiers who were involved in the cold-blooded murder of three innocent Kashmiri youth in a fake encounter in Machil area of Kupwara district in April 2010.

Call for the demonstrations has been given by the joint resistance leadership comprising Syed Ali Gilani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Muhammad Yasin Malik, KMS reported. The demonstrations are also aimed at registering protest against the persecution and arrest of pro-freedom leaders by Government of India through its agencies.

The resistance leaders in a joint statement issued in Srinagar termed the suspension of life imprisonment awarded to Indian soldiers involved in the Machil fake encounter as murder of justice and said that time was witness that despite thousands of incidents of grave human rights violations committed by Indian forces' personnel not a single soldier or policeman was punished.

Referring to the arrest of Hurriyat leaders, they said that the BJP government was working on crushing the Kashmiris' freedom movement. They said that a crackdown and a propaganda blitzkrieg had been launched against Hurriyat leaders and activists to implicate them in fabricated criminal cases.

The Amnesty International India-chapter said that the developments in Machil fake encounter case once again highlighted the need for allegations of human rights violations to be investigated and prosecuted by independent civilian authorities, instead of the secretive military justice system.

Programme Director at Amnesty International, India, Asmita Basu, in a statement issued in New Delhi said, civilian investigations and trials offer a degree of transparency and independence that is missing from the military justice system.

On the other hand, Indian troops in their fresh act of state terrorism martyred three Kashmiri youth during a military operation in Gurez area of Bandipore district. Complete shutdown was observed in Qaimoh and Khudwani areas of Kulgam district, today, against the thrashing of the family and ransacking of the house of a member of Hizbul Mujahideen, Tawseef Ahmed Sheikh, by Indian police and troops during a raid, last night.

In New Delhi, Indian Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament, further eroding the Article 370 that accords a special status to Jammu and Kashmir has passed amendments in the Collection of Statistics (Amendment) Bill, 2017 for applying it to occupied Kashmir.