Every day is a black day for people of Jammu and Kashmir, Masood Khan

President Azad Jammu Kashmir Sardar Masood Khan thanked the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for its consistent and steadfast support to the people of Jammu and Kashmir since 1990.

He also thanked the leadership of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia for their strong solidarity with the people of Pakistan and Kashmir in difficult times, said a news release received here on Monday.

Addressing a seminar organised by the Pakistan Consulate General in Jeddah, the OIC General Secretariat and Pakistan’s Permanent Mission to the OIC on the occasion of the Kashmir Black Day, President Masood Khan said “every day is a black day for the besieged people of Jammu and Kashmir” reminding everybody of the 113th day of the crippling lockdown in the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

The seminar and the Kashmir Black day was organized at the premises of the OIC headquarters where a pictorial exhibition on the theme of the gruesome human rights situation in IOJK was also arranged.

Pakistan’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Raja Ali Ejaz, OIC Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs and OIC Special Envoy for Jammu and Kashmir Yousef Aldobeay, newly-appointed Pakistan Permanent Representative to OIC Rizwan Saeed Sheikh, Consul General Khalid Majid, and APHC representatives Syed Abdullah Gilani and Faiz Naqshbandi also addressed the seminar.

The AJK Presidents on the occasion said OIC had created mechanisms – such as the OIC Contact Group on Jammu and Kashmir, the Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission and Special Envoy on Jammu and Kashmir – that had enabled it to monitor the Kashmir situation closely and methodically.
He thanked the OIC Secretary-General Dr. Yousef bin Ahmad Al-Othaimeen for his strong statement and the OIC’s powerful communique following India’s illegal actions on August 5.

The Communique, he said, had in clear and strong words condemned Indian actions and demanded an end to Indian repression, restoration of the rights of Kashmiris, lifting of the telecommunications blockade, and resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute in accordance with the UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

President Masood Khan urged the OIC to hold an extraordinary session on the situation in IOJK because the human rights and humanitarian situation was deteriorating every day, announce to send a fact-finding mission, and ask India to receive OIC’s Special Envoy on Jammu and Kashmir.
India, he said, would say NO to the last two demands but this would underline the firm resolve of the OIC to closely monitor the human rights situation and send a clear message that it would not leave their Kashmiri brothers and sisters alone.

The President said “daughters and mothers, sons and fathers, children, as well men and women of all ages are looking towards the OIC with hope and trepidation as they are entrapped and impaled”.

The situation, he said, is horrendous and the world will not know the real scale of the massacres and persecution until the curfew is lifted.

“The little information that trickles out, despite the blockade, is just the tip of the iceberg. The avalanche has yet to come”, he said.

He added that people of Kashmir should not be treated as the “orphans of the global family” or the ‘orphans of the Islamic Ummah” while they are being eliminated before the eyes of the world.
He informed that Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) had enjoined to “Assist anyone who is being oppressed, Muslim or not”.

He said that disarmed and innocent Kashmiris cannot be left to the mercy of the 900,000 occupation troops who were brutalising the population every day.

The President quoted Hurriyet leader Syed Ali Gilani as having said that a genocide was happening and the Islamic community should step forward to help them otherwise they would he be held accountable now and in the hereafter.

The President advised OIC members not to believe the lies and falsehoods of India designed to hoodwink the world that the situation in IOJK was returning to “normal”.

“There is no normalcy, and there is no terrorism. There is civil disobedience though. There is seething anger against India’s depredations”, he said.

The President said India was stoking the flames of war to hide its crimes in Kashmir. It had threatened to attack Azad Kashmir and Pakistan and had even shown keenness to use nuclear weapons in such a nefarious adventure.

He warned that if a war was imposed by India on Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, they would defend themselves naturally, but such a war could kill millions of people and its fallout would affect the neighborhood including the Gulf region and the Middle East.

Such a war should be averted through proactive diplomacy, he added.