SRINAGAR (Kashmir English): The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) has said that India has illegally and unconstitutionally turned entire Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) into a military cantonment and police state, which is in an open-air prison since August 5, 2019.
According to Kashmir Media Service, APHC spokesman Advocate Abdul Rashid Minhas in a statement issued in Srinagar said the Indian Bharatiya Janata Party government and its installed LG regime is using its military and police establishment to wage a war on the oppressed people of Kashmir to intimidate them into submission during house raids and cordon and search operations.
He said the life, property, honour and dignity of Kashmiri people, including women, are not safe due to the presence of hundreds of thousands of Indian forces having impunity with draconian laws in the territory.
He said the Indian government, while depriving the people of occupied Jammu and Kashmir of all their fundamental and political rights, has been involved in gross human rights violations for the last 78 years but after August 2019 the Indian state terrorism and atrocities have witnessed an alarming upsurge in the territory.
The APHC spokesman, expressing concern over the plight of illegally detained Hurriyat leaders and activists, languishing in notorious jails of India and occupied Jammu and Kashmir for the past many years, denounced the unabated arrest spree launched by Indian forces in nook and corner of the occupied territory in the garb of cordon and search operations.
He said that more than 4,000 leaders and activists, belonging to the Kashmir resistance movement, had been put behind bars on baseless charges.
Terming the house raids and arbitrary arrests as the worst example of political vendetta, he said such repressive policies are aimed at changing the freedom narrative of Kashmir, which had remained a distant dream of the Indian fascist regime since its illegal occupation of the territory in 1947.
Detained Kashmir leaders
The spokesman hailed the steadfastness and valour of the illegally detained Hurriyat leaders and activists, including APHC Chairman, Masarat Aalam Butt, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Muhammad Yasin Malik Aasiya Andrabi, Naheeda Nasreen, Fahmeeda Sofi, Nayeem Ahmed Khan, Ayaz Akbar, Peer Saifullah, Raja Merajuddin Kalwal, Shahid-ul-Islam, Farooq Ahamad Dar, Maulvi Bashir Irfani, Bilal Siddiqi, Mushtaq-ul-Islam, Dr Hameed Fayaz, Advocate Mian Abdul Qayoom Noor Muhammad Fayaz, Zaffar Akbar Butt, Advocate Zahid Ali, Abdul Ahad Parra, Assadullah Parrey, Omar Adil Dar, Dr Muhammad Qasim Fakhtoo, Dr Muhammad Shafi Shariati, Ghulam Qadir Butt, Rafiq Ahmad Ganai, Saleem Nanaji, Muhammad Yasin Butt, Firdous Ahmed Shah, and human rights defender Khurrum Parvaiz and said they are the worst victims of political vendetta.
He urged the United Nations to take cognizance of the plight of Kashmiri political prisoners lodged in death cells without medical care and basic amenities.
He stressed the need to resolve the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the United Nations resolutions in the best interests of regional and world peace and prosperity.
