Aamir Latif
15 August 2019•Update: 15 August 2019
KARACHI, Pakistan
Pakistan's Prime Minister Imran Khan on Thursday warned of "another Srebrenica-type massacre and ethnic cleansing of Muslims," in Jammu and Kashmir following abrogation of long-standing special rights of the disputed region by New Delhi last week.
More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed after Bosnian Serb forces attacked Srebrenica in July 1995, despite the presence of Dutch troops tasked with acting as international peacekeepers.
Srebrenica was besieged by Serb forces who were trying to wrest territory from Bosnian Muslims and Croats to form their own state.
In a Twitter post with a black display picture following his government's announcement to observe India's Independence Day as Black Day, Khan accused India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi of repeating the example of deadly 2002 Gujarat riots in the picturesque valley.
"In IOK [Indian Occupied Kashmir] 12 days of curfew, presence of extra troops in an already heavily militarized occupied territory, sending in of RSS goons, complete communication blackout; with the example of Modi's earlier ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Gujarat," he said, referring to the killing of more than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, in Gujarat when Modi was the state chief minister.
The cricketer-turned politician also warned that the ongoing situation in the valley could potentially set off radicalization of Muslim youths.
"Will world silently witness another Srebrenica-type massacre & ethnic cleansing of Muslims in IOK? I want to warn international community if it allows this to happen, it will have severe repercussions and reactions in the Muslim world setting off radicalisation & cycles violence", he went on to say.
Tensions between the two nuclear rivals have ratcheted up after India's controversial move stripping the limited autonomy of the breathtakingly beautiful valley.
Kashmiris fear that the move is aimed at changing the demography of the Muslim-majority region and it's cultural identity. India for its part contends that the special status earned Kashmiris nothing but terrorism and isolation.
New Delhi also defended cut off of communication links, arrests and deployment of heavy troops as precautions to prevent violence in the disputed region, which has been under curfew and a massive security crackdown for last 12 days.
