RAWALPINDI: The chairman of the Special Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir, Shehryar Khan Afridi, has said that India’s plan to bring demographic changes in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir is bound to fail.

Speaking at the oath-taking ceremony of the Corona Relief Tiger Force here at Rawalpindi Arts Council, Mr Afridi said the international community would never allow India to make fraudulent demographic changes in India-held Kashmir.

He said that Indian forces had increased targeting Azad Kashmiri populations along the Line of Control (LoC) under a strategy as Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted to shift media focus from humiliating defeat of Indian forces in Ladakh.

He lauded the leadership role played by Prime Minister Imran Khan in raising the Kashmir issue at all international forums, saying that Pakistan would continue raising the Kashmir issue.

Citing the example of protests across the United States against the murder of a black man, George Floyd, by police, he said all peace-loving people all over the world should raise their voice against Indian atrocities against the people of Kashmir.

“While India has put eight million Kashmiris under a double lockdown in their own homes, Indian forces are writing a new chapter of genocide and oppression in Kashmir. The Domicile Law is in complete violation of human rights and a part of a conspiracy to bring in a demographic change in Kashmir by turning Kashmiris into a minority in their own homeland,” he added.

Published in Dawn, July 8th, 2020