05 February 2019•Update: 05 February 2019
By Ahmet Gurhan Kartal
LONDON
India is "committing grave human rights violations in occupied Kashmir," Pakistan’s foreign minister has said.
“Human blood is being spilled in occupied Kashmir,” Shah Mahmood Qureshi said at an event hosted by the House of Commons in London, adding that the "right to self-determination was a basic right of the Kashmiri people."
“The Kashmir valley is burning as the people are scared,” he said. “Everyday reports of rape and killings come from held Kashmir.”
Qureshi added that Pakistan would “continue to lend every kind of diplomatic and moral support and will stand by them [the Kashmiris] every step of the way”.
Held Monday evening, the event was organized by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Pakistan chaired by Conservative MP Rehman Chishti.
Qureshi’s comments coincided with Kashmir Solidarity Day, which is marked on Feb. 5 of each year.
"India is using different tactics to change the demography of the held Valley," Qureshi told the audience.
Calling on the international community to break its “silence” over what he described as “ongoing atrocities and grave human rights violations in Kashmir”, Qureshi urged the international media to closely cover events in the Indian-held region.
Deadliest year
The year 2018 was the deadliest within the past decade in Jammu and Kashmir, with 586 people killed, according to a rights group based in the region.
In a recent report, the Srinagar-based Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Societies (JKCCS) said nearly 586 people -- including 160 civilians, 267 militants and 159 Indian security personnel -- had been killed in the region last year alone.
Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full. A small sliver of Kashmir is also held by China.
Some Kashmiri groups in Jammu and Kashmir continue to fight against Indian rule and demand independence or unification with neighboring Pakistan.
According to several human rights organizations, thousands of people have reportedly been killed in the conflict since 1989.
“The year 2018 was the deadliest year of the last decade,” the JKCCS report states. “The killing of 267 militants during encounters with armed forces and police is also the highest in the last decade.”
The report goes on to assert that Kashmir had witnessed a “marked uptick” in the killing of militants since 2016, with 145, 216 and 267 militants killed in the region in 2016, 2017 and 2018 respectively.
At least 120 residential homes, meanwhile, have been either partially or totally destroyed in the region due to anti-militancy operations, the report adds.
Since they were partitioned in 1947, the two countries have fought three wars -- in 1948, 1965 and 1971 -- two of them over Kashmir.
Indian and Pakistani troops have also fought intermittently since 1984 in Kashmir’s northern Siachen Glacier region, where a ceasefire went into effect in 2003.
