Nobel Peace Laureate Malala Yousafzai has appealed to the International community to help halt the inhumanity and heartbreak in India-administered Kashmir.
“The Kashmiri people, like people everywhere, deserve their fundamental human rights… They should live free of fear and repression,” Malala said.
“I call on the UN, the international community and India and Pakistan to work together with utmost urgency to right these wrongs, providing the people of Kashmir with the dignity, respect and freedom they deserve,” she said, according to a statement tweeted by her father Ziauddin Yousafzai.
Indian-held Kashmir has seen worst forms of human rights violations since July 8 after the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan – seen as a freedom fighter by the people and separatist by New Delhi. Indian forces have used brutal force to quell Kashmiri protestors and blinded several young people by firing pellet bullets into their faces.
All 10 districts of the Indian-administered Kashmir have seen protests, who have defied curfew and come to the streets of Srinagar and other big and small towns. India responded with brute force. Indian and international media accounts say over the last two months, more than 60 Kashmiri youth have been killed while over 7000 civilians injured after Jammu and Kashmir Police and Indian paramilitary forces used pellet guns, tear gas shells, rubber bullets, as well as assault rifles.
Kashmir has been at the center of conflict since India and Pakistan gained independence from the British colonial rule in 1947. Both the countries have fought two full-fledged wars over Kashmir in 1948 and 1965 and a limited war in Kargil in 1999.
Despite UN resolutions for a plebiscite in Kashmir to know the will of the people, a status quo is in place over the last 69 years. Pakistan and India have hundreds of rounds of talks over Kashmir but nothing has yielded any positive result.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s has threatened Pakistan with destabilizing Balochistan in order to divert widespread condemnation of his brutal treatment of Kashmiri protestors.
Internationally respected voices like that of Arundhati Roy have spoken out against Indian repression. According to that Indian writer, Kashmiris need a fair treatment.
Now Nobel Laureate’s Malala Yousafzai’s voice in favor of Kashmiri youth is of great significance as she is known as the girl fighting for the rights of the youth especially the girls everywhere in the world. She worked undauntedly even when Swat was under the rule of the Tehrik-e-Taliban terror group. She was shot in 2012 by the hardliners but survived. For her struggle and commitment to girls’ right to an education she was declared a Nobel Peace Award recipient in 2014.
