Muhammad Ullah: The Washington-based World Kashmir Awareness Forum (WKAF) has said that continued illegal Indian military occupation has posed an existential threat to the Kashmiris living in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

The WKAF said this in a statement issued in Washington in connection with the 75th anniversary of India’s invasion in Jammu and Kashmir. Indian troops had landed in Srinagar on 27 October in 1947 and illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir in gross violation of the Partition Plan of Indian subcontinent and against the aspirations of the Kashmiri people.

The statement said, “Indian military occupation beginning in 1947 has produced an existential threat to Kashmiris with over 100,000 civilian deaths, 10,000 disappearances, and civic, political and economic life critically suppressed. As Indian armed forces continue to imprison Kashmir’s political leaders, journalists, and human rights activists, Kashmiris’ demand for self-determination keeps growing stronger.”

The WKAF said, we denounce India’s occupation of Kashmir and the various other violations it has inflicted upon the Kashmiris, including illegal surveillance, imprisonment, online harassment, and permanent revocation of democratic and legal rights since August 5, 2019. For decades, the people of Jammu and Kashmir have endured relentless violations of privacy and human rights at the hands of Indian occupational forces, it deplored.

The statement said, on this monumental day, Kashmir and its supporters reflect on the crisis that has defined hundreds of thousands of lives throughout the diaspora. “We call on India to put an immediate end to undemocratic surveillance, human rights abuses, and occupation. We demand an immediate end to the accelerated targeted killings and imprisonment of over a thousand of innocent civilians in the last few days,” it said.

The WKAF said it is imperative that the world powers stop the Indian forces from continuing to occupy Kashmir, and we ask for the international community to demand accountability and justice – or witness another genocide that could have been stopped.