2mn domicile certificates issued in IoK: AJK MP

A lawmaker from Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) said on Monday that the Indian government had issued around two million new domicile certificates in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) to change the identity of the Muslim-majority region.

Abdul Rasheed Turabi, chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, AJK Legislative Assembly, told journalists during a visit to the Karachi Press Club that Modi’s Hindu nationalist government aimed to change the demographic makeup by issuing domicile certificates to the outsiders.

“This is unacceptable. The people of Jammu and Kashmir have vowed they will not let this happen,” said Turabi, who is also the convener of the All Kashmir Parties Rabita Council. He asked the Pakistani government to end the Shimla and Islamabad agreements to show its protests over India’s brutalities in occupied Kashmir.

He said that India invaded and reoccupied IIOJK on August 5, 2019, and then illegally divided the state into two parts and annexed it to the Indian federation against the wishes of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

Since then, he said, the Indian forces had been systematically killing, torturing, forcibly making people disappear, especially targeting young men, and incarcerating people. “India through these actions is violating international humanitarian law and norms of customary international law,” he said.

Turabi also demanded of Islamabad to empower the AJK government. He also congratulated the newly elected office-bearers of the KPC and offered condolences for journalists who had recently passed away.