RAWALPINDI: Pakistan Peoples Party leader and President of the Progressive Welfare Organisation Muhammad Aamir Siddiqui has said that Kashmir is Pakistan’s jugular vein and the unfinished agenda of Allama Iqbal’s concept of Pakistan.
Speaking in connection with Youm-e-Istehsal, he said Kashmiris were Pakistan’s brothers and sisters and the world had promised them the right to self-determination. He said 2,557 days had passed since India’s unilateral and illegal actions in Jammu and Kashmir on August 5, 2019.
Siddiqui said helping the oppressed and raising voice against oppression was a human duty, adding that no nation could be kept subjugated through coercion and brutality. He said the sacrifices of the Kashmiri people, who had stood firm in the face of Indian oppression, would not go in vain.
He said India had used several tactics to occupy the paradise-like land of Kashmir, one of which the world witnessed on August 5, when India revoked Articles 370 and 35A and ended the special status of occupied Kashmir in an attempt to deprive Kashmiris of their identity.
He said Kashmiris had been confined under continuous curfew and lockdown for 2,557 days, while India shut down mobile phones, internet and media to keep them cut off from the world, isolate them and advance its occupation.
The PPP leader said the Kashmir dispute was the unfinished agenda of the partition of the subcontinent and a long-standing issue pending before the United Nations Security Council.
He said unarmed Kashmiris had been subjected to pellet gun attacks by occupying Indian forces, depriving Kashmiri children and youth of their eyesight. He added that killings, violence, assaults against women, and arrests of youth and senior leaders could not block the Kashmiri people’s struggle for freedom.
Siddiqui said Pakistan and India were two nuclear states and peace in South Asia was linked to lasting peace in Kashmir. He said the dream of peace and prosperity could only be realised through an immediate solution of the Kashmir issue in accordance with the aspirations of the Kashmiri people.
He urged the international community to take notice of Indian oppression, brutality, killings and detentions of Kashmiris and ensure the resolution of the Kashmir dispute. He said the people of Pakistan would continue to extend moral, diplomatic, social and political support to the Kashmiri people at every level.
He called upon the world to fully support the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination and ensure a solution in line with their aspirations, saying the sacrifices of those striving for freedom would bear fruit and the sun of oppression would soon set while the sun of freedom would rise.
