ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani yesterday demanded an end to human rights violations in the Indian Kashmir and urged the international community to play its role for a just resolution of the lingering dispute.
Addressing the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly and Council on the Kashmir Solidarity Day here, Gilani said the Kashmir issue needs to be resolved according to the UN resolutions and aspirations of its people.
Gilani said Pakistan has undertaken several unilateral measures to ease tension in the region and to resolve the dispute through talks.
“On the contrary, India continues with the violation of basic human rights in the Occupied Kashmir,” he said.
Earlier, AJK Prime Minister Sardar Muhammad Yaqoob Khan in his opening remarks thanked the people and government of Pakistan for their unflinching support to the Kashmir cause and expressing their solidarity with the Kashmiri people.
Thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets yesterday to denounce Indian rule in Kashmir. A public holiday, Kashmir Solidarity Day supports the region’s right to self-determination under UN resolutions that call for a plebiscite in Kashmir on whether it should be ruled by Hindu-majority India or Muslim Pakistan.
Some 2,000 people formed a human chain and demonstrated in the capital Islamabad opposite Parliament, an AFP photographer said. The rally was organized by Pakistan’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami (JI).
“We will never accept Indian occupation of Kashmir and tell India that it cannot enslave people by force,” JI chief Qazi Husain Ahmed told the rally.
In Lahore, Pakistan’s second-largest city, political parties and human rights organizations arranged several rallies. More than 4,000 people attended one at Lahore’s main Mall Road, an AFP reporter said.
Meanwhile, around a dozen Kashmiri militant groups gathered publicly Wednesday to urge Pakistan to lift bans against the Islamist organization India blames for the Mumbai attacks and its political arm. “We appeal on the government of Pakistan to lift the ban against Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) because no Kashmiri jihadi organization was involved in the Mumbai attacks,” Syed Salahuddin, head of the militant Hizbul Mujahedeen, told the gathering of around 1,000 people in Muzaffarabad.
— With input from agencies
