‘Why is Pakistan silent on genocide in Kashmir?’

ISLAMABAD - Why is Pakistan silent on the “genocide in occupied Kashmir” where Indian security forces are “brutally crushing the human, civil and political rights of the Kashmiris and even preventing them from praying in mosques”, an editorial in a Pakistani Urdu paper Sunday said.

“Today the Hindu society is developing new strategems to carry out a genocide of the Kashmiri Muslims… Today the most brazen violation of human rights is taking place in India-occupied Kashmir,” the editorial in the Nawa-i-Waqt said.

It said Kashmiris, who have been struggling for self-determination for more that 100 years - first against the autocratic Dogra rulers and now against the Indian government - were being sought to be crushed by their “oppressors in the most barbaric ways”, including violent repression of protests, imposing curfews and stiff restrictions and even a ban on congregational prayers in mosques.

Titled “Kashmir mein namaz jamaa band, chairman Kashmir committee kahan hai (Congregational prayers banned in Kashmir, where is chairman of the Kashmir Committee)”, it said the “biggest incapability of the Pakistan government was that neither was it aiding the ongoing struggle for independence of the Kashmiris, nor was it protesting the trampling of human, civil and political rights of the Kashmiri Muslims or informing the international media of the happenings”.

“There is a Kashmir Committee in the National Assembly and Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman is its chairman. But neither the chairman nor the committee talks about Kashmir or presents a way to make the ongoing struggle of the Kashmiris for self-determination successful.”

“It is the opinion of the people that the committee and its chairman be energised to discharge their allotted functions or else such a chief be found who has the interests of the Pakistani people and the Kashmiri people at heart,” the editorial demanded.