OTTAWA /DNA/ – Like Pakistan and elsewhere in the world, Youm e Istehsal Kashmir was observed in Canada to condemn India’s illegal and unilateral actions of 5 August 2019 in the Occupied Jammu and Kashmir and to pay homage to the sacrifices of Kashmiris for their just struggle to self-determination.

Speaking to participants of a photographic exhibition arranged at the Pakistan High Commission in Ottawa, High Commissioner Zaheer A. Janjua condemned the illegal, immoral and unconstitutional Indian actions of stripping the occupied Jammu & Kashmir territory of its special status four years ago in blatant violation of the international law, UN Security Council resolutions and the 4th Geneva Convention.

He said that it was an open secret that the Indian government majorities taken those unilateral actions to carry out demographic engineering in IIOJK and reduce its majority Muslim population to a minority. These nefarious designs were achieved over the subsequent four years through grant of domiciles to non-Kashmiris, revision of limits of constituencies to increase Hindu vote in6 the State Assembly, demolition and destruction of Kashmiri properties and a general assault on their identity and culture.

The High Commissioner noted that the Indian security personnel, numbering about a million, had used the draconian Public Safety Act and the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act to terrorise the Kashmiri population. The entire Kashmiri leadership, including Yasin Malik, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Syed Shabbar Ahmed Shah, is in jail. Torture, custodial killings, rape, pillage and destruction of properties have become order of the day. Thousands of Kashmiri women have been abducted and raped by the Indian security forces.

He also referred to Indian Minister of State for Home Affairs Ajay Kumar Mishra’s admission in the Upper House of Parliament on July 26, 2023, that 9,765 women and girls had gone missing in Jammu and Kashmir between 2019 and 2021. “This statement shows the nature of brutality Kashmiris continue to suffer with no end in sight,” he said.
Zaheer Janjua urged the international community and the torchbearers of human rights, including countries such as Canada, to support and stand by the Kashmiris in their just struggle for realization of right to self-determination. He also called upon the Pakistani diaspora in Canada to play its role in sensitizing the Canadian public about the gravity of worsening human rights in Occupied Kashmir and the need to resolve the issue in accordance with the UN resolutions.
The High Commissioner re-affirmed Pakistan’s continued moral, diplomatic and political support to the Kashmiris until they won their freedom and achieved their cherished goal of self-determination.
Earlier, a large number of Pakistani and Kashmiri diaspora attended and viewed the photographic exhibition arranged at the Chancery. Documentaries showing the human rights violations and depicting the plight of the Kashmiris in Occupied Kashmir were also shown on the occasion. Similar exhibitions and documentary screening were also arranged in Consulate Generals of Pakistan in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.