ISLAMABAD: Shabbir Ahmed Shah, a senior member of the APHC and the head of the Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party, has urged the international community to pay attention to the rising levels of Indian state terrorism in Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).
He claimed that the Modi government is using the judiciary as a tool to muzzle legitimate political voices in Kashmir.
According to Kashmir Media Service, the DFP chief, who is currently detained in New Delhi’s notorious Tihar jail, expressed his concern about the deteriorating human rights and political situation in the valley and claimed that the Indian government has increased state terrorism against Kashmiris, primarily targeting pro-freedom activists, leaders and civil society members who have been critical of the aggressive policies of the Modi regime.
The DFP chairman criticized state repression in response to democratic disagreement in Jammu and Kashmir. He claimed that while occupation authorities have reopened cases against hundreds of political activists, witch hunts against social, political, and human rights activists continue unabatedly.
“They are being forced to appear in courts far from their homes,” he claimed, adding that they are frequently summoned to police stations, harassed, degraded, and hauled there.
‘Arbitrary arrests of Kashmiri activists and political leaders, detaining them under black laws and leaving them to rot in interrogation cells and jails without presenting them in the court of law, getting them punished in fabricated and fake cases, giving them severe punishments like the death penalty, reopening old cases in which they have already been acquitted, and dragging them and their families to the courts is highly condemnable,’ he lamented.
Shah claimed that in addition to political activists, members of civil society, human rights advocates, and even journalists were being detained and imprisoned.
He lamented that the Modi administration was silencing legitimate political voices in Kashmir by using the judiciary as a weapon.
He claimed that the relentless repression of opposition represented a grave breach of fundamental human rights.
Shah urged that the international community should exert pressure on India and press Modi administration to stop using state repression to quell political dissent in Kashmir and using its judiciary as a tool to punish Kashmiri leaders who have been engaged in a nonviolent struggle to secure the fundamental rights that Kashmiris are guaranteed by no less a body than the United Nations.
APP—
