At a lawyers’ conference held in Mirpur on November 26, attended by all district and tehsil bar associations, a resolution was passed unanimously that if the government of Pakistani occupied Jammu Kashmir (PoJK) fails to appoint judges to all courts they will observe indefinite strike and stop attending courts.
The conference was hosted by Azad Jammu Kashmir (read Pakistani Occupied J & K) High court bar association. It was decided at the end of the conference that every Thursday lawyers will continue to boycott courts in PoJK for one month as a protest against lack of judges.
Currently there is only one High Court judge instead of the required nine judges. Appointment of eight judges remains pending for more than one and a half year now. Only one chief justice is taking care of thousands of cases lying pending and the number of cases are on the increase by the day.
According to the statutes of Supreme court if a judge retires from his post then a new judge should be appointed within 30 days or if a judge dies then the period of a replacement judge to be appointed is 90 days.
Teachers have announced that from November 30 they will go on indefinite strike against lack of teacher and staff and to forward their demand for school buildings, girls toilets, drinking water facilities and general repair of school building in Poonch.
Government employees have taken out a large protest rally in Muzaffarabad on November 17 against unbridled price hike. Another protest against mehengai was taken out on November 24 in Rawalakot by students and members of a political party.
Former military service men are protesting almost on a daily basis against non-payment of their pensions. Meanwhile, PoJK information department employees have not received a single penny for past six months.
The list goes on and on. Lack of flour, power cut-outs, scarcity of drinking water, broken roads and a failing health and education sector epitomize today’s PoJK.
On top of the daily struggle to survive my people are faced with the presence of two evils. One is the Pakistani military occupation itself. Women and children are humiliated at military check points as they enter or leave the occupied territory.
The second evil is the presence of jihadi terrorists in PoJK especially those who have returned from Afghanistan after the fall of Kabul on August 15 this year. Terrorist organisations run their offices not only from the capital city of Muzaffarabad but from other major towns such as Mirpur, Kotli, Bagh and others.
Every village mosque has a jihadi imam appointed by a terrorist organisation depending upon the influence they have in a particular region. The Imam acts as a liaison between the local youth and the terrorist out fit for jihadi recruitment.
Ever since the western parts of the Jammu province (PoJK) were forcefully occupied by Pakistan on October 22, 1947 its people have been suffering at the hands of the occupier. However, in recent years the exploitation combined with the lack of infrastructure and development has not only increased to unbearable proportion but become complex.
The deprivation and servitude has become so intense that not a single day passes without witnessing angry protest marches, sit-ins, strikes, walkouts, rallies and jalsas at which people present all sorts of demands ranging from economic to social and political ones.
Today, my people are faced with a humanitarian crisis in its true sense. Lack of judges, teachers, doctors and paramedics, scarcity of water, electricity, jobs, health and education facilities and above all a crumbling infrastructure have turned a place once called paradise on earth into a living hell.
Pakistan attacked the State of Jammu Kashmir on October 22, 1947 and in doing so has committed a war of aggression against my people that continues to this very day. Pakistan destroyed the peace in the region by not abiding by the United Nations demand to withdraw all of its troops and aliens from occupied territories but on the contrary sending terrorists into the Vale of Kashmir. And finally, Pakistan committed crime against humanity by conducting the genocide of thousands of citizens of Jammu Kashmir.
All of the above mentioned crimes committed by Pakistan tantamount to War Crimes. The question we face today as a people is how do we bring to halt the downwards spiral of our living conditions and our subjugation by the Pakistani army and its Jihadi proxies.
Only by finding a solution to our misery can a humanitarian crisis of gigantic proportions be averted.
Dr Amjad Ayub Mirza is an author and a human rights activist from Mirpur in PoJK. He currently lives in exile in the UK.