AJK president asks media to help project Kashmir issue

Around 500,000 people have been killed in Kashmir since 1947 when Kashmiri people started their struggle for liberation.

This was stated by Azad Jammu and Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan while he was speaking with television journalist Mujahid Barelvi at an Oxford University Press (OUP) bookshop on Wednesday evening.

The title of the talk was ‘The Kashmir problem: past, present, and future’. Tracing the history of the Kashmir issue, the AJK president said Kashmiri people were enslaved through a conspiracy hatched by Jawaharlal Nehru, Mountbatten, and the Maharaja of Kashmir. “India has occupied Kashmir but has not been able to consolidate its hold,” he asserted.

Almost a half of the Indian army has been stationed in Kashmir, Khan said. “But the Kashmiris’ hearts beat with Pakistan,” he remarked, stating that the Pakistani flag made the shrouds of the Kashmiri freedom fighters. Commenting on the initial fight for freedom, the AJK president said that Kashmiris had pushed the Dogra armies to further east and had Sheikh Abdullah not sided with India at that juncture, all the bloodshed that ensued could have been averted.

He said that it was then the Article 8 was incorporated in the Indian constitution which laid down Jammu and Kashmir as an integral part of India. When asked whether the struggle in Kashmir was affected by Pakistan’s involvement in the Afghan Jihad in 1980s, the AJK president partly agreed.

To date, Pakistan had fought three wars with India, Khan said. However, during 1990s, India broke all records of brutality when it waged a war against local Kashmiris, he added. According to the AJK president, India wanted to enslave the Kashmiris through state terrorism.

“The Kashmir struggle is on and the Kashmiris are determined to see their struggle reach fruition,” he said.

When asked to comment on the post-9/11 situation when the independence struggle came to be viewed as terrorism, the AJK president said even the United States (US), despite being the world’s strongest nation, had to invoke Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations which accepted the right of individual or collective self-defence. “If the US has a right to defend itself, how can we deny the Kashmiris that right?” he said.

Khan lambasted the duplicity of the West and pointed out that while it was going out of its way to keep the Palestine issue alive by throwing unqualified support behind Israel, it referred to Kashmir as a ‘frozen’ issue, despite all the bloodshed happening there.

According to the AJK president, India was fighting to curb Kashmir issue on three fronts – internally, along the Line of Control and Balochistan. He also asked the media to unite to form a comprehensive strategy to project the Kashmir issue to the world. “The media should form a network on Kashmir,” he said.

Khan wound up the talk with the exhortation to the gathering, “Don’t lose heart. We shall free Kashmir”. The Kashmiris, he said, must be given a chance to express their opinion through a plebiscite.

Earlier, Arshad Saeed Hussain, OUP Pakistan managing director, spoke of the scenic beauty of Kashmir, its perennially snow-covered peaks and azure lakes and streams. He added that there was, however, a wee side to it which was the travails of the people of Kashmir and the constant bloodshed.