People from different walks of life staged a protest demonstration near here on Monday to draw attention of the international community towards alleged human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir at the hands of security forces.
The demonstration was held under the aegis of International Forum for Justice and Human Rights (IFJHR), a Srinagar based organisation, to commemorate the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations General Assembly on this day in 1948.
Participants, who included students and civil society activists, marched through the main Muzaffarabad-Islamabad highway near Ambore refugee camp, some 5 kilometres south of here chanting pro-freedom and anti India slogans amid heavy downpour.
They were also holding banners and placards inscribed with slogans condemning “human rights abuses being perpetrated by security forces with impunity” on the one hand and reticence of international community, particularly the UN and the international human rights watchdogs, about it, on the other.
“Where is justice in case of Jammu and Kashmir,” read one placard.
Speaking on the occasion, IFJHR vice chairman Mushtaq ul Islam regretted that those who proclaimed themselves as champions of human rights were keeping mum about human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir.
“Before marking this day as a fashion, they should first stop human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere in India,” he stressed.
Uzair Ahmed Ghazali, a migrant leader, lamented that while the West had been maintaining “shameless silence” over human rights violations by non-Muslim states such as India, Israel and Myanmar, it had been using the same term as a tool to subdue Muslim countries.
“There should be an end to this hypocrisy and double standards,” he said.
PPP leader Shaukat Javed Mir appreciated the June 2018 report by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as a “significant breakthrough” after a long time.
However, he stressed that the UN must establish an international enquiry commission to investigate human rights violations in “Indian Kashmir” as suggested by the report.