Staff Report
ISLAMABAD: Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information and Broadcasting Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan Wednesday said the Indian occupation forces had imposed strict restrictions on freedom of expression to hide its crimes against humanity from the international community.
Addressing a function organized by the National Press Club here to express solidarity with the besieged Kashmiri media persons, she said in the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJ&K), over 8 million Kashmiris were incarcerated while the local press was facing the worst type of censor. The media persons belonging to independent newspapers and television channels were not allowed to freely report the Indian state terrorism in the valley, she added.
Dr Firdous said the Kashmiris were deprived of their religious, legal, constitutional and all other fundamental rights by the Indian occupation forces as a punishment for demanding the right to self-determination promised by the United Nations with solemn commitments given by the Indian leadership.
The Kashmiris, she said, had given unprecedented sacrifices in the freedom struggle. Thousands of youth were abducted and killed while thousands of women were raped for demanding of freedom from the Indian yoke, she added.
The SAPM said the Kashmiris’ struggle for freedom could not be suppressed by India for long and the day would come soon when they would get rid of the Indian subjugation. She said in the past, India used to hoodwink the international community on the Kashmir issue, but now Prime Minister Imran Khan as an ambassador of the Kashmiris, had exposed its real face while presenting Pakistan’s narrative on the matter.
She said the media was a powerful and effective tool for highlighting the ground situation in the IOJ&K. She said in the morning she led a rally of Pakistani women from all walks of life to express solidarity with their brave sisters and children of the IOJ&K. She presented a memorandum to the United Nations Country Representative in Pakistan calling for halting Indian atrocities in the IOJ&K and ending its lockdown.
She urged the UN to break its silence over the ongoing gross human rights abuses by India in held Kashmir.
