India has no right to celebrate its Republic Day in IIOJK: Dr Fai

Washington: Secretary General of the World Kashmir Awareness Forum, Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, has denounced India to hold its Republic Day celebrations in illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

According to Kashmir Media Service, Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai in a statement issued in Washington said New Delhi has “no legal, moral or constitutional authority” to celebrate its Republic Day on a territory which is not its part. He reminded India and the international community that the 1948 UN Security Council resolution called for creating conditions for a plebiscite so that the people of Jammu and Kashmir could decide for themselves whether they wished to be a part of India or join Pakistan.

Dr Fai also said India’s false claim about Kashmir being its integral part was the prime cause of continued death, destruction, devastation, pain and suffering of the people of Kashmir.

“There are shocking human rights violations, including over 100,000 killings in the last three decades alone, torture, rape, mutilations, arson, plunder, abductions, arbitrary detentions and draconian punishment for the exercise of peaceful political dissent: and contempt for international law and binding self-determination resolutions of the United Nations Security Council,” he said.

Dr Fai said, “India’s war crimes in Kashmir are notorious: Soldiers kill civilians with impunity. Rape and torture are routinely practice but never punished. Indeed, Indian law grants virtual legal immunity to any type of war crime or crime against humanity perpetrated in Kashmir.”

He said, the only solution to the Kashmir dispute lies in allowing the people of Kashmir to exercise their unrestricted right to self-determination to decide their destiny – a pledge made to them by the world community some 77 years ago. If the Kashmir dispute was resolved, much of the hostility between India and Pakistan would dissolve and the region would not be living on the edge of a nuclear holocaust, the Kashmiri leader added.