President of Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJK), Sardar Masood Khan has said that the people of Jammu & Kashmir have the sole right to determine their political destiny in light of the resolution passed on January 5, 1949 at United Nations Security Council.
In a statement issued here on Friday the president said the people of Pakistan, AJK and Indian Occupied Kashmir renew their pledge to amicably resolve this dispute in the spirit of the peaceful solution presented by the United Nations in its resolution. The peaceful people of Jammu & Kashmir were determined for the harmonious resolution of this dispute, he added.
The people of Kashmir, he said were not begging for their freedom but were asking for their just right to self-determination, which was a fundamental right enshrined in Article 1 of the United Nations Charter, he said.
President said India had always been reluctant in carrying out the requisite conditions laid down in the UNSC resolutions for conducting a peaceful plebiscite in IOK, and instead had resorted to coercive methods to suppress the freedom struggle of the innocent Kashmiris.
Masood Khan said India had made Kashmiris pariahs in their own homeland. President AJK said that human right violations committed by the Indian Occupation forces constitute war crimes and were synonymous with ethnic genocide. Delhi had always installed a puppet government in IOK through orchestrated elections which is in flagrant violation of international conventions and laws.
He said Indian forces under the patronage of the central government were torturing the local population in IOK by murdering peaceful Kashmiris, harassing the Hurriyat leadership, using lethal pellet guns, transforming the demography of Muslim populated areas, illegally incarcerating innocent protestors and dishonoring the womenfolk.
Regretting the inattention of the international community, the President said the world powers must take notice of the gross human right violations taking place in the IOK. The Kashmir issue had been overshadowed by realpolitik and the vested economic and strategic interests of the world nations, he added.
Masood urged the need to take the issue to the United Nations Security Council as the tall claims of bilateral talks by India had yielded no results. India through its malicious tactics had taken the Kashmir dispute to the back burners by refusing to engage in any constructive or concrete diplomatic and political dialogue on Kashmir, Masood Khan said.
The resolution of this issue without the consent of the people of Kashmir was futile and India’s attempt to exclude them from the equation was nonsensical as the very people of Kashmir are the key stakeholders in the dispute, the president said.
President Masood Khan asserted that freedom of Kashmiris from India is inevitable and no means of intimidation will be able to inhibit the ongoing freedom struggle. The president on the occasion thanked the people and government of Pakistan for
their ardent diplomatic, political and moral support in the struggle of the Kashmiri people in attaining their undeniable right to self-determination.

Source: APP