US asked to stop selling weapons to India

Islamabad : Mushaal Hussein Mallick, the wife of detained Hurriyat leader Yasin Malik, commended Beverly Hill, President of the Organization for Human Rights and Women’s Rights in the United States for raising voice against the widespread human rights violations in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), says a press release.

Mushaal, who is also the Chairperson of Peace and Culture Organisation, said that Beverly Hill, who through a letter to former US presidential candidate and newly elected Congress representative, Allred Collin not only drew her attention towards the rising HR violations but also asked to stop the US gun manufacturer Sig Sauer from selling automatic weapons to India.

The Chairperson said that now the world started realizing the Indian barbarism and brutalities in the occupied valley.

Beverly Hill in an email to Allred Collin wrote, “I plead with you to do everything in your power to stop US gun manufacturer Sig Sauer from selling automatic weapons to India. The suffering and loss of innocent life will be terrible. We must not aid India in violating and bloodily suppressing Kashmiris. They have lost their autonomy, human rights, and livelihoods.”

She demanded that the US should instantly drop the plan to sign with India an approximately $100-million contract for 72,000 assault rifles with Sig Sauer, a New Hampshire-based firearms company.

This would be their second transaction; India and Sig Sauer signed an identical contract in early 2019, the first shipment of which was immediately sent to Indian units deployed in the occupation of Kashmir.

“These American-made weapons would almost exclusively equip Kashmir-based units like the Rashtriya Rifles which have long, documented records of war crimes and human rights violations and enjoy legal impunity in Kashmir under legal provisions such as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA),” the letter added.

“Sig Sauer is complicit in the Indian government’s ongoing militarization, repression, occupation, and settler-colonization of Kashmir,” she said.

Mushaal said that like Beverly Hill, other people should also raise the issue of Indian atrocities in the occupied valley so as to ensure resolution of the dispute as per UNSC resolutions and aspirations of the people of the scenic valley.