Kashmiris hold spirited anti-India rally in New York; ‘We reject foreign occupation’ : Fai

NEW YORK : A large number of Kashmiri-Americans and their allies Sunday braved thundershowers and held a lively demonstration at New York’s iconic Times Square to denounce India’s widespread human rights abuses in occupied Kashmir and called on the world community to implement the UN-pledged right to self-determination to the Kashmiri people.

The demonstrators — Men, women and children — persisted through pouring rain as they marked the fifth anniversary of India”s annexation of occupied Jammu and Kashmir in violation of international law and UN Security Council resolutions.

Organized by all Kashmiri-American Diaspora organizations, speakers at the rally called on the United Nations to implement its own resolutions calling for a UN-supervised plebiscite to determine the wishes of Kashmiri people as demonstrators in the crowded square waved banners and chanted slogans.

They also condemned India’s August 2019 action in scrapping the special status of Kashmir and voiced support and solidarity with the Kashmiri people facing an existential threat posed by the illegal actions of Modi Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

The demonstrators raised vociferous slogans of “Modi Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity in Kashmir”; “India: Guilty of Genocide 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, said that successive Indian governments had reneged on their promises and even a leader like Jawaharlal Nehru lacked the moral courage to honour his commitment to honour UN resolution that was made to the people of Kashmir at a rally held in the heart of Kashmir in 1947. Since then, he said, the situation has only worsened, with Modi and his cronies completing the game plan to end Kashmir’s autonomy.

Dr, Khan said that having increased the number of occupation forces 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 region.

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Secretary General of World Kashmir Awareness Forum, a Washington-based advocacy group, said that the events of August 5, 2019, were consistent with the ruthless occupation and suppression the people of Kashmir have suffered under the unpopular Indian rule. As was widely acknowledged and documented internationally, he said this brutal occupation has led to more than 100,000 civilian deaths, more than 10,000 individuals missing or disappeared, and thousands of Kashmiri women raped.

“This does not even begin to account for the tens of thousands tortured, maimed, and permanently injured men, women and children by the Indian military and paramilitary forces 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 added, “We stand with them in their struggle to stop the Indian government from dehumanizing them and completing their settler-colonial project to remove them culturally, politically, and ethnically from the face of the earth,”

Imam Saffet Catovic, a long-time US Muslim community organizer and activist and environmental leader, said that he would like to see a humane resolution of all international conflicts including that of Palestine and Kashmir. The killings of innocent civilians in Gaza and Indian occupied Kashmir, he added, must shake the conscience of all peace-loving people around the world.

Sardar Zarif Khan, a Kashmiri leader, who is recovering from health problems, spoke via video-link and thanked the participants for taking time to be the part of the rally in New York despite inclement weather.

Sardar Taj Khan, Vice Chairman of Kashmir Mission USA, Sardar Zulfiqar Roshan Khan, a Kashmiri leader, Sardar Shoaib Irshad, Joint Secretary of‘Kashmir American Welfare Association’ (KAWA), and other activists, including Raja Mukhtar, Advocate Sardar Imtiaz Khan Garalvai, Sardar Aftab Roshan Khan, Sardar Sajid Sawar, Professor Saeed, Professor Rashid Shah, Raja Razzak, Ms. Amana Taj, Nazam Hussain, Khalid Fahim, Imtiaz Khan of New Jersey, Sardar Farooq Khan of Virginia, and Sadaqat Hayat of Vancouver, Canada, also spoke on the occasion.