Time for human rights watchdogs to shun silence on Kashmir: Qureshi

By News Desk

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Thursday has urged on global human rights organisations to break their silence over the oppression and barbarism in Indian-occupied Kashmir, which had crossed all limits.

“How long the human rights organisations will remain silent on the persistent subjugation and cruelty in the occupied valley,” he said, referring to Wednesday’s killing of an elderly Kashmiri civilian in front of his three-year-old grandson by Indian security forces in Sopore, terming the painful event an “eye-opener for the world”.

Qureshi said he had updated the European Union over the brutal incident that was “clearly an extrajudicial killing of a civilian”. He vowed to continue raising human rights abuses in the disputed territory at all international fronts.

He pointed out that Kashmir faced a communications blackout because India wanted to conceal the ongoing situation. “It is the moral duty of the champions of human rights to raise voice for the rights of Kashmiris,” he said.

Separately, Foreign Office Spokesperson Aisha Farooqui said India could not wash away the truth by “fake news” after images flashed across the world depicting the “callousness and inhumanity of the occupation forces”.

“The heart-wrenching picture of the three-year-old boy in Sopore will forever remain seared in the imagination of all those who believe in humanity, human rights and fundamental freedom,” she said in her opening statement at a weekly press briefing here at the Foreign Office.

Farooqui said as occupied Kashmir braced 332nd day of continued brutalisation, the sufferings of innocent people could not remain hidden from the world. “India cannot wash away the truth by fake news and turning its propaganda machinery faster,” she said.

On the Line of Control, she mentioned that 1,546 ceasefire violations took place in the first six months of this year, resulting in 14 martyred and 114 seriously injured. The spokesperson said Pakistan categorically rejected the grant of domicile certificates in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJ&K) by the Indian authorities to reportedly 25,000 Indian nationals.

She said Pakistan had been consistently sensitising the international community about the Indian leadership’s threatening statements to use terrorism as a tool to destabilise Pakistan. Pakistan has already shared with the international community incriminating evidence about the Indian intelligence agency RAW’s involvement in terrorist activities, she added.