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Today's Paper | December 18, 2024

Updated 25 Dec, 2017 11:50pm

'Lives of Kashmiris have no value, we have no rights': wife of leader detained by India

Mashaal Malik, wife of detained Kashmiri leader Mohammad Yasin Malik, said on Monday that while Pakistan is allowing Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav to meet his wife and mother on humanitarian grounds, Indian forces have kept her as well as her daughter from meeting Malik for the past three years.

In a video message — shared shortly after the Indian spy's family landed in Islamabad — Mashaal said, "A Kashmiri has no right to meet his wife and child; he is being treated worse than a proclaimed terrorist."

She added: "Is this what India is, [on] one hand it approached the International Court of Justice to save Jadhav, who is a proclaimed terrorist, while on the other this champion of human rights treats Kashmiris worse than terrorists."

"The lives of Kashmiris have no value and we have no rights just because [we] are struggling against India in a fight for freedom."

"This leaves a question for the world as well as India," Mashaal said as she concluded the video.

Last year in October, Mashaal urged the United Nations to take notice of human rights violations taking place in India-held Kashmir.

She said at a press conference at her residence last year that Yasin Malik, chairman of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front, had been languishing in prison in Srinagar since July 8, 2016 after the killing of freedom fighter Burhan Wani.

At the time, the Kashmiri leader’s life was at risk and he was shifted to the shifted to an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of a Srinagar hospital.

She had requested UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to take notice of state-sponsored violence in occupied Kashmir and prevail upon the Indian authorities to immediately cease actions that violated human rights, dignity and fundamental entitlements of Kashmiri people.

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