All Parties Huriyat Conference Condemns India's Land Seizures and Demographic Engineering in Kashmir
The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) has strongly criticized India for speeding up its plan to change the demographics of Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir. They say India is doing this by taking land and changing who lives there.
A spokesperson for the APHC, Advocate Abdul Rashid Minhas, said in a statement from Srinagar that India's control over Kashmir started with the 1947 invasion of Srinagar. He added that since then, India has continued to exploit and suppress the local people.
He stated that the August 5, 2019 action, where Kashmir's special status was taken away, was another step in India's plan to control the area, fulfilling a long-held wish of Hindu nationalist groups to wipe out Kashmir's unique identity.
Minhas cautioned that India is changing the population of Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir by settling Hindus from outside Kashmir there. This is marginalizing the local people and taking advantage of the area's natural resources, all while under strong military control. He added that Indian business leaders are being used to push this colonial plan forward, and he compared India's actions in Kashmir to Israel's taking of land in Palestine.
Criticizing India for ignoring UN resolutions and international law, he also criticized the world's silence on India's clear colonial actions in Kashmir. "It's time for the world to speak up and hold India responsible for its colonial ambitions in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir," Minhas said.
