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Kashmiri Americans Observed July 13th As the Martyrs Day: Dr. Fai

Articles, Uncategorised

Washington, D.C. July 13, 2014. The Kashmiri Americans join the worldwide Kashmiri community to observe “Martyr’s Day”, in memory of 22 Kashmiris killed by Dogra troops on this day in 1931. The ‘Martyrs Day’ memorializes all those innocent victims, nearly 100,000, “who have been forcibly silenced by the occupation forces that erupted two and half decades ago,” said Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Secretary General of the World Kashmir Awareness.

Fai expressed concern over the on going tragic situation in Kashmir because all available evidence testifies that human rights violations are systematic, deliberate, and officially sanctioned. India has given its forces powers to shoot to kill and the license to abuse the people in whatever ways they like in order to suppress the popular movement for basic human rights and self-determination.

He emphasized, ‘India trembles at any attempt to resolve the Kashmir crisis because she is frightened by its outcome.’ When a former Defense Minister, Krishna Menon, was questioned as to why India would never hold a free self-determination election in Kashmir, he confessed that all of India’s political leaders knew it would lose. And would 700,000 soldiers be needed in Kashmir if the main opponents to India’s occupation were but a handful of outside “extremists”? The question answers itself.

Fai questioned the statement of India’s foreign ministry spokesman who said that Kashmir was an integral part of India. Kashmir is not an integral part of India, nor are Kashmiris separatists, he underlined. Because under all international agreements between India and Pakistan, negotiated by the United Nations and endorsed by the Security Council, Kashmir does not belong to any member country of the United Nations. So, the claim that Kashmir is an integral part of India does not stand. The people of Kashmir are not and cannot be called separatists because they cannot secede from a country to which they have never acceded to in the first place.

Even one of India’s well-known author, Ms. Arundhati Roy confirmed it by saying ‘It’s (Kashmir) not ever been really a part of India, which is why it’s ridiculous for the Indian government to keep saying it’s an integral part of India.’

Fai discounted the United States hopes that the Kashmir dispute could be settled through bilateral peaceful talks between India and Pakistan. He recounted the litany of failed bilateral efforts and said that the people of Kashmir have steadfastly maintained that tripartite talks are the only way to resolve the Kashmir issue.

We hope that the United States and the international community will realize that what is at stake in the dispute is not only the survival of the people of Kashmir but also the peace and stability in the region of South Asia, Fai stressed.

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    State of human rights in Kashmir : Testimony

    March 17, 2014

    Sir Nigel Rodley
    Chairperson
    UN Human Rights Committee
    Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights
    United Nations Office at Geneva
    CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland
    Fax: (41 22) 917 90 11
    E-mail: CP@ohchr.org

    Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee:

    I am grateful for the opportunity to submit this testimony on the state of human rights in Kashmir to the 110th session of the United Nations Human Rights Committee being held in Geneva, Switzerland, this week until March 28, 2014. Much to my chagrin in light of the warming of diplomacy between India and Pakistan and incipient dialogue between India and Kashmiri leaders, the state of human rights in the disputed territory is chilling. Indeed, it shocks the conscience.

    Indiscriminate killings:

    The best estimate of extrajudicial killings in Kashmir since 1989 approaches a staggering 100,000. That number dwarfs the killings in Northern Ireland, Palestine, Bosnia, Kosovo and Southern Sudan which have brought the world to tears and revulsion. The 100,000 corpses also tops the death toll for United States forces in Vietnam over 10 years.

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    Be Back Soon

    Be Back Soon

    Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai

    Washington, D.C.
    Tuesday, July 10, 2012

    Saying goodbye is sometimes easy but sometimes a very difficult thing to do, particularly when I am saying goodbye, though temporarily, to freedom and to a mission that I have given my life to. But the real goodbye is not the words that I have formed in my head because there are none that express how I really feel. The goodbye is in a slowly swelling sense of absence of all the people and places and efforts I have put my heart into that has become like a flower near a pond that may dry up for lack of rain. Its sustenance is going away. The absence is the letting go of all the things that I embrace. How does one let go of love? How does one let go of one’s heart, one’s very life? A life is not merely held within one’s blood circulating in the body or in the breath that one takes. It is so much more in all the people that I have lived for and my beloved country of origin, Kashmir – the paradise on earth.