NEW YORK, Jan 05 (APP): A prominent Kashmiri advocacy organization has strongly condemned India’s occupation of Kashmir, and hoped that the incoming Biden administration would champion the Kashmiri people’s cause for the exercise of their United Nations-pledged right of self-determination.
“Seventy three years of oppression and terror have not weakened the Kashmiri peoples’ commitment to self-determination,” the World Kashmir Awareness Forum, which is based in Washington, said in a statement marking Kashmiris’ Right to Self-determination Day being observed on Tuesday.
The Forum regretted that India’s brutal military occupation has continuously denied the Kashmiri people their right of self-determination which the United Nations affirmed on January 5, 1949.
Today, it said, the situation in occupied Kashmir is existential in nature. With 100,000 civilian deaths, 10,000 missing and civic, political and economic life critically suppressed, the people of Kashmir are on the brink of genocide, the Forum pointed out.
In a further escalation of oppressive tactics, in 2019, it said India imposed the longest internet blackout ever in a democracy, while engineering laws paving the way to land grabbing and changing the region’ demographics region in favour of Indian settler colonies.
In November 2020, India had carried out surprise raids against non-governmental organizations (NGOs), media outlets, human rights activists, political opponents and journalists.
“It is the responsibility of all nations who uphold democracy and human rights to champion our cause; the World Kashmir Awareness Forum is hopeful that the new Biden-Harris administration will take the lead in this vital work.”
