ISLAMABAD: President Azad Jammu and Kashmir Barrister Sultan Mehmood Chaudhry on Tuesday urged the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) countries to impose economic sanctions on India and boycott its products.

Addressing a special meeting of the Kashmir Contact Group of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) at Parliament House here he asked the OIC to help stop oppression and barbarism in occupied Kashmir and sought to redouble efforts for settlement of lingering Jammu and Kashmir dispute.

He also suggested that the Muslim body should set up a humanitarian aid for Kashmiris.

He said that over the past 70 years India has been remorselessly violating the UN resolutions on Kashmir and denying Kashmiris of their inalienable right to self-determination.

The AJK president said that owing to India’s continual denial to grant Kashmiris their birth right, the issue of Kashmir has been hanging over for the past seven decades.

“Dozens of the UN resolutions have been passed in this regard but India has been consistently violating these resolutions and denying Kashmiris of their right to self-determination,” he said adding that in brazen violation of the UN resolution the Indian government had changed the special status of the occupied Kashmir on Aug 5, 2019.

Since then, he said: “Indian authorities have issued fake domiciles to 4.2 million non-state Hindus to change the proportion of population there.”

Granting state subject rights to non-Kashmiris and nefarious designs to change the region’s demography, he said, was a flagrant violation of the UN resolutions.

He said the UN Commission on Human Rights had submitted a report on human rights violations in 2018, which mentioned widespread human rights violations committed by India forces.

He lamented that the human rights violations were still rampant in occupied territory.

He said the OIC should play its role for the release of political leaders and youth who have been arrested before and after Aug 5, 2019 and left to rot in jails far away from their homes.

On the occasion, the APHC representative Syed Faiz Naqshbandi and Ghulam Mohammad Safi briefed the OIC delegations about the prevailing political and human rights situation in the occupied Kashmir.

They also presented a memorandum to OIC secretary general.

The meeting was also addressed by Foreign Minister of Pakistan Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Foreign Ministers of other Islamic countries.

The Kashmir Contact Group was chaired by Secretary General OIC Hussain Ibrahim Taha.

Staff correspondent from Muzaffarabad adds: Kashmiri activists staged a rally here on Tuesday to highlight their demand for right to self-determination.

They also urged the ongoing 48th council of foreign ministers of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation to condemn India’s unlawful moves in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

The rally, organised by Jammu Kashmir Pasban-i-Hurriyat, an organisation of post 1989 migrants from occupied Kashmir, was held at Burhan Wani Chowk, with its participants holding a banner and placards inscribed with slogans highlighting their demands. They were also chanting slogans like “Wake up OIC, wake up.”

Published in Dawn, March 23rd, 2022