NEW YORK: A large number of Kashmiri-Americans and their allies Sunday braved thundershowers and staged a lively protest demonstration at New York’s iconic Times Square to condemn India’s widespread human rights abuses in occupied Kashmir and called on the world to implement the UN-pledged right to self-determination to the Kashmiri people.
The protest demonstrators including men, women and children persisted through pouring rain as they marked the 5th anniversary of India’s illegal annexation of IIOJK in violation of global law and UNSC resolutions.
Organized by all Kashmiri-American Diaspora organizations, speakers at the rally called on the UN to immediately implement its own resolutions calling for a UN-supervised plebiscite to determine the wishes of Kashmiris as the protestors in the crowded square waved banners and also chanted slogans.
They strongly denounced India’s August 2019 action in scrapping the special status of IIOJK and voiced support and solidarity with the people of Kashmir facing an existential threat posed by the illegal actions of Modi’s government.
The protestors raised vociferous slogans of “India: Guilty of Genocide in Kashmir”; Modi Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity in Kashmir” Kashmiris Reject Indian Occupation: UN Resolutions only Solution,”; “Indian Forces: Out of Kashmir”; “No justice: No Peace”; and “Freedom for all: Freedom for Kashmir”.
Dr. Imtiaz Khan, a prominent Kashmiri American scholar, stated that successive Indian governments had reneged on their pledges and even a leader like Jawaharlal Nehru lacked the moral courage to honour his commitment to honour the United Nations resolution that was made to the people of Kashmir at a rally held in the heart of Kashmir in 1947. Since then, he stated, the situation has only worsened, with Modi and his cronies completing the game plan to end Kashmir’s autonomy.
Dr, Khan stated that having increased the number of occupation troops to 900,000, India was settling hundreds of thousands of Hindu extremists in the disputed region, with the aim of changing the demographic character of the entire region.
Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Secretary General of World Kashmir Awareness Forum, a Washington-based advocacy group, stated that the events of August 5, 2019, were consistent with the ruthless occupation and suppression of Kashmiris have suffered under the unpopular Indian rule. As was widely acknowledged and documented globally, he stated this brutal occupation has led to over 100,000 civilian deaths, over 10,000 individuals missing or disappeared, and thousands of Kashmiri women raped.
“This does not even start to account for the tens of thousands tortured, maimed, and permanently injured men, women and kids by the Indian military and paramilitary troops during their 77-year reign of terror, but despite this tyranny, the people of Kashmir never have nor ever will give up their right to be free.”
Dr. Fai said, “We stand with them in their struggle to prevent the Indian government from dehumanizing them and completing their settler-colonial project to remove them politically, culturally, and ethnically from the face of the earth.”
Imam Saffet Catovic, a long-time US Muslim community organizer said that he would like to see a humane resolution of all global conflicts including that of Kashmir and Palestine. The killings of innocent people in Gaza and Indian occupied Kashmir, he said, must shake the conscience of all peace-loving people worldwide.
Sardar Zarif Khan, a prominent Kashmiri leader, who is recovering from health issues, spoke via video-link and thanked the participants for attending the rally in New York despite inclement weather.
