DM Monitoring
NEW YORK: Azad Jammu and Kashmir President Barrister Sultan Mehmood Chaudhry has said that the Kashmir dispute could only be resolved through the free exercise by the Kashmiri people of their UN-pledged right of self-determination, and not by military means as India was attempting to do.
“There is no military solution,” he told a large number of Kashmiris, Pakistanis and Sikhs who staged a big anti-India demonstration in front of the United Nations (UN) building in New York on Saturday, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the UN General Assembly. Holding banners and placards in their hands inscribed with pro-freedom and anti-India slogans, the participants raised vociferous slogans against Modi and expressed complete solidarity with the struggling people of Jammu and Kashmir.
The Azad Kashmir president was the chief guest at the rally in which Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, secretary-general of the Washington-based World Kashmir Awareness Forum, Sardar Sawar Khan, a former member of Azad Kashmir Council, were among those who spoke. A prominent Sikh leader, Dr Amarjit Singh, president of the Khalistan Affair Center, also spoke in support of the Kashmir cause.
President Sultan Chaudhry said he had come to New York to apprise the international community about the continued atrocities and gross human right violations committed by over 900,000 Indian troops deployed in occupied Jammu. He said the international attention was now focused on Kashmir and he called for unity among people as they push for freedom from the Indian yoke.
Dr Fai said the president of the General Assembly, Abdulla Shahid, must know that the Prime Minister modi, who spoke on Saturday, was declared as ‘butcher of Gujarat’. Within the past two years, he said, Modi had made Kashmir a hell for its people. The people of Kashmir, he said, always had been hostile to the presence of India’s troops on their soil and had resisted to such oppression, and over hundred thousand Kashmiris had died within the past 30 years alone.
“The world powers and the saner elements in both India and Pakistan need to realize that the participation of Kashmiri leadership in the dialogue process with India and Pakistan is the sine qua non that will help to achieve the lasting peace and tranquility in the region of South Asia,” Dr Fai added.
Sardar Sawar Khan called on the UN to decisively move towards implementing its resolutions that pledged the right of self-determination to Kashmiris, as did Khalid Awan, president of People’s Party, USA.
