Letters

To

 

Mr. N. N. Vohra

GOVERNOR OF OCCUPIED JAMMU AND KASHMIR

 

As the primary agent of Indian rule in occupied Jammu and Kashmir you must be very well in know that during the last seventy years the actions of your country have left tens of thousands of people dead in Jammu and Kashmir. Your army enforcedly disappeared thousands of people mostly youth, staged fake encounters, arbitrarily arrested and tortured the youth, destroyed property and resorted to arson and plunder as a collective punishment and as a war weapon against a population resisting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir. Your state used all means of repression in the book including, systematic sexualized violence, to subdue our movement for freedom and justice. And you have found that a nation that has resolved to achieve freedom cannot be defeated.

 

The past seventy years are a testimony to the courage, fortitude, resistance, resilience and repeated resurgence of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The history of freedom struggles across the world bear witness that military might and repression has always failed in the face of peoples’ yearning and determination for freedom. You very well know that the problem of Kashmir is essentially a political problem in need of a political solution. Because of the non-resolution of this issue the whole region lives in a state of fear, uncertainty and mistrust. Wars have been fought, thousands of lives lost, blood spilled but to no avail. This situation has remained so because of India’s refusal to grant right of self-determination to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, although India took this issue to the United Nations where many resolutions in this regard are pending implementation. Holding a referendum for the right to self-determination is the only way forward. As you are the key agency to oversee implementation of Indian policy in Jammu and Kashmir, it is your moral duty to convey Indian State to accept that Kashmir is a political problem and hence can only be resolved politically and not militarily. No amount of military might will resolve it as has been made evident over and over again in the past seven decades.

 

Tell your state and your people not to soak their hands further in the blood of people who are just asking for their basic human and political right to which each individual and nation is entitled. We call on your conscience to help end this long chapter of deception, tyranny, death and destruction.

 

People of Jammu and Kashmir


 

To


Honorable Angela Merkel

Chancellor

Federal Republic of Germany

 

Dear Madam Chancellor,

 As-salaam-u-alaikum. Please first of all accept my greetings. I am writing to you today from one of those remaining regions in the world which struggle with dignity and courage for the freedom of their people. I am writing to you as one of the countless ordinary Kashmiris who struggled through the better part of the previous century for their right to self-determination so that their people too could assume their rightful place in the international community. The Kashmiris still wait with patience for their freedom and that day when they could also join the larger collective struggle for a new era of justice and peace. It is for this reason Kashmiris expressed unwavering support for the United Nations Resolutions on Kashmir even as the international community did little to honor its commitments and responsibilities to the Kashmiri people. 

 

The Kashmiri people have nevertheless always been grateful for the principled support for universal human rights and a peaceful, negotiated settlement to all international disputes by the members of the European Union.  But Kashmiris are dismayed and disappointed by the decision of the German Embassy in India to organize a concert in Kashmir conducted by Zubin Mehta as part of “broader engagements” with Kashmiri people. Despite the concerns expressed by Kashmiris in the media, the German Embassy decided to go ahead with the concert. We believe that this concert is being used by India to legitimize its military Occupation of our land and whitewash its shameful atrocities in Kashmir.

 

The Kashmiri people had high hopes that Germany after reunification will play a meaningful and responsible role in the resolution of the Kashmir dispute for an enduring and just peace in South Asia. But the decision of the Germany Embassy to organize this music concert against the wishes of the Kashmiri people has forced me to seek your intervention. Kashmir is a disputed territory and such an intervention undermines the efforts of Kashmir freedom fighters who have been struggling against India’s illegal military occupation since 1947. Kashmir and Kashmiri culture go back thousands of years and Kashmiris are eager for cultural exchanges and dialogue with the rest of the world. But when culture is used to whitewash human rights abuses, dilute Kashmir’s disputed status and project a false image of a wounded Kashmir to the world, it pains us that the great German people are being made complicit by India in such a blatant distortion of the truth. We remain convinced of Germany’s good intentions but are disappointed that the recent initiative of the German Embassyis indifferent and insensitive to the aspirations of Kashmiri people. We are also disappointed that the German Embassy in India has relied on the same security grid for the concert which has been internationally indicted for its serious human rights violations.  We hope you would immediately intervene to stop this concert as it is a very unfortunate development in relation to the future of peace in this region.

 

I would in the end again reiterate the commitment of the Kashmiri people to a meaningful friendship with Germany and invite you to Kashmir to witness for yourself the oppression which Kashmiris face even in their everyday lives. Lastly, I again appeal to you as a leader of Germany and Europe to intervene in this matter. I end with a prayer to Almighty Allah for mercy to all mankind.

 

Sincerely yours,

Syed Ali Shah Geelani

Chairman

All Parties Hurriyat Conference

Indian-ccupied Jammu and Kashmir.

 


To,

The Parliament Members of India

Dear friends,

Today I am addressing you on behalf of my people, who for last 64 years have been striving for peace, justice, freedom and dignity. During these 64 years we have suffered immensely at the hands of your armed forces, who are implementing the policy of subjugation and control over our lives, resources, culture, and dignity. This policy of suppression has consent of your parliament.

My words may be harsh as I do not know of any other way of conveying the brutalization which my people have faced because of your state policies. Your remorseless policies of violence have resulted in the death of 1 lakh people in last two decades. Your tyrannical policies have facilitated the torture of more than 2 lakh people.

Your parliament has provided moral, political, legal immunity to your troops, thus providing an incentive to their violence. This moral impunity has encouraged your soldiers to molest and rape thousands of our women. This political impunity has boosted the moral of your soldiers to maim thousands of people. This legal impunity has facilitated the disappearance of 10,000 men and custodial killing of thousands more. Your acquiescence has allowed the secret burials of thousands, resulting into unmarked graves and mass graves.

Today I want to specifically remind you of how your policy of militarization has produced unmarked graves and mass graves in Jammu and Kashmir. Officially the government admits there are 2730 unmarked graves, out of which 574 persons after being killed and buried after giving them the name of foreign militants have been identified as local residents. The number of unmarked graves is far more than what has been acknowledged by the government, as the investigation has not gone beyond 38 out of 100s of graveyards, where unmarked graves exist.

In Poonch and Rajouri districts the State Human Rights Commission is investigating into the presence of 3844 unmarked graves. So far the investigation is going on in only 5 districts and numbers of unmarked graves and mass graves are more then 6500; imagine what could be the total number of unmarked graves and mass graves in 20 districts of Jammu and Kashmir.

Many of the disappeared persons may have been buried in these graves. Disappearance is a continuing crime till the dead bodies are found. The family members of 10,000 disappeared persons are hoping amidst hopelessness.

Your government boosts that they have managed to control the situation in Kashmir and peace is returning according to them. Is this how you deal with dissent in Indianised democracy? Is this silence of unmarked graves and mass graves, what you call peace?

You may choose to call these atrocities, as a result of aberrations and violations by some black sheep, but the truth is that these crimes are an institutionalized and systematic response of the Indian state against the popular uprising of people of Jammu and Kashmir for freedom. If the present Police Chief Kuldeep Khoda himself is involved in the murder of 3 civilians and later in getting their bodies disappeared, then one can say with certainty that the Indian rule is to kill, to brutalize and to terrorize people of Jammu and Kashmir, so that their will to attain freedom is crushed.

Do these mass graves and unmarked graves not shake your conscience? Is it not true, that these unmarked graves have been produced in the name of protecting your national interests? Mass graves and unmarked graves are symbols of war crimes.

I urge the conscientious parliamentarians amongst you to initiate a debate in your parliament on the issue of unmarked graves, mass graves and all kinds of crimes being perpetrated on the people of Jammu and Kashmir and assert to end this shameful and tyrannical chapter of occupation of Jammu and Kashmir. Today it is people of Jammu and Kashmir, who express abhorrence; tomorrow it would be your own future generations as well who would be ashamed of their inheritance and precedents which you will set for them.

Your Well Wisher

Syed Ali Geelani


Chairman
All Parties Hurriyat Conference
Jammu and Kashmir,
Srinagar

 



 


Message of Syed Ali Geelani to 38th session of the Organization of Islamic Conference Foreign Ministers     in Astana, Kazakhstan

Bismillahi Arrahmani Arrahim 

His Excellency Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu,
Secretary General Organization of Islamic Conference
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen
 

Assalamu Alaikum wa-Rahmatu Allahi wa-Barakatuhu,


It is of immense pleasure to me that the 38th session of the Organization of Islamic Conference Foreign Ministers is being held in Astana, Kazakhstan in the neighborhood of the state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Excellencies, you are barely an hour’s flight away from an occupied land, - a land occupied by India through its military might on 27th of October 1947. Sixty three years on, under the hubris of military might and arrogance of power it has been suppressing and subjugating   over ten million people living in one of the world’s beautiful place- that was rightly called by the European Union as world’s most ‘beautiful prison’ or by Washington Post a ‘cage’ called paradise.
During past six decades over half a million people have been killed by these occupying forces. And with every passing year under the façade of ‘largest democracy in the world’, India has been intensifying its repression. The tales of macabre, intimidation, terror, torture and torment are legibly written in carmine on walls all over the state. More than hundred thousand non-combatants have been killed during past two decades, thousands have been killed in custody and there have been over eight thousand enforced disappearances. The reports about mass graves made   public by an international organization tell horrendous stories about India showing total disrespect for human rights as contained in charter of the Unite Nations. During 2010, another 121 students, children and youth were killed by trigger happy soldiers enjoying impunity under the most inhuman law the Armed Forces Special Powers Act that was recently denounced by the Amnesty International as a “lawless law”. This law as very aptly said by the Amnesty International is being used as “a revolving door to keep people they can’t or won’t convict through proper legal channels locked up and out of the way.”
Majority of the delegates in this conference know the history about the birth of this tragedy. I need not to reiterate that it is the longest unresolved dispute on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council and this august body that has passed eighteen resolutions   guaranteeing right to self-determination to the people of Jammu and Kashmir and holding of a plebiscite under its aegis has so far not succeeded in getting     its own resolutions executed.
I also need not to restate that it is story of India betraying its commitments to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, to Indian Parliament and to the International community. However to refresh the memory of Indian leadership through this august house let me pick a few quotes from Indian leadership.
Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal in a telegram wrote to Prime Minister of Pakistan:
“Our view which we have repeatedly made public is that the question of accession in any disputed territory or state must be decided in accordance with wishes of people and we adhere to this view.”
(Telegram 402 Primin-2227 dated 27th October, 1947 to PM of Pakistan repeating telegram addressed to PM of UK).

In another broadcast to Indian nation on 3rd November, 1947, Pandit Nehru said:
 
“We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given not only to the people of Kashmir but to the world also. We will not and cannot back out of it.”

In his letter No. 368 Primin dated 21 November, 1947 addressed to the PM of Pakistan, Pandit Nehru said:
 
“I have repeatedly stated that as soon as peace and order have been established, Kashmir should decide of accession by Plebiscite or referendum under international auspices such as those of United Nations.

In his statement in the Indian Constituent Assembly on 25th November, 1947, Pandit Nehru said:
 
“In order to establish our bona fide, we have suggested that when the people are given the chance to decide their future, this should be done under the supervision of an impartial tribunal such as the United Nations Organization. The issue in Kashmir is whether violence and naked force should decide the future or the will of the people.”

In his statement in the Indian Parliament on 7th August, 1952, Pandit Nehru said:
 “Let me say clearly that we accept the basic proposition that the future of Kashmir is going to be decided finally by the goodwill and pleasure of her people.  …. If, however, the people of Kashmir do not wish to remain with us, let them go by all means. We will not keep them against their will, however painful it may be to us. I want to stress that it is only the people of Kashmir who can decide the future of Kashmir. It is not that we have merely said that to the United Nations and to the people of Kashmir, it is our conviction and one that is borne out by the policy that we have pursued, not only in Kashmir but everywhere. Though these five years have meant a lot of trouble and expense and in spite of all we have done, we would willingly leave if it was made clear to us that the people of Kashmir wanted us to go. However sad we may feel about leaving we are not going to stay against the wishes of the people. We are not going to impose ourselves on them on the point of the bayonet.”

The people of Jammu and Kashmir living amidst stark naked bayonets for over past sixty three years have been persistently and persuasively reminding the international community and United Nations about the promise of right to self-determination and India unashamedly having backtracked from these commitments. They have been demanding the intervention of global fraternity for asking India to keep its promises.
There has been hardly any year during past six decades when people of this occupied land have not peacefully called upon the big powers, the Muslim brotherhood, the OIC and the United Nations to impress upon India to end its occupation of the state but the role that international community was expected to play has not been there so far. There can be no denying that many important countries in the world that include United States, European Countries, China and the Muslim nations have been unequivocally supporting the cause just demand of the people of Jammu and Kashmir but what has been unfortunately missing is these nations coercing India to have respect for charter of the United Nations.
The people of Jammu and Kashmir have been amply making it clear to the world community that they want to end the ‘forced marriage and end occupation’. They made it sufficiently clear through  peaceful movements during past three years 2008, 2009, 2010, when millions converged on roads all over the state with one voice:  ‘We want freedom’, Go! Go! Go back- India Go Back.
The reports that were carried in the international press from Washington Post to the Arab News about these movements that lasted for months should be with majority of delegates in this conference as fresh as morning breeze.  These movements not only belied Indian claim over Jammu and Kashmir but made the world community to recognize the movements as peaceful, non-violent and indigenous.
The people of this land are indebted to the OIC for having granted observer’s status to   Jammu and Kashmir, for appointing a special envoy for Kashmir, for appointing a contact group and raising issue of human rights violation in Jammu and Kashmir in every forum and for religiously adopting every year a resolution in the annual meetings supporting the just cause of 15 million people.  
Excellencies, the people of Jammu and Kashmir are kith and kin of yours; they are kith and kin of over a billion people living in 56 member countries of OIC. I am sure the people living in these Muslim countries are feeling our suffering     as intensely as we have been feeling pain of our brethren in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine and other places under occupation of alien forces.  
The birth of the Organization of Islamic Conference was seen by many a Muslim scholars as a manifestation of Islamic renaissance as dreamt by people like Jamal-u-Din Afghani and Muhammad Abdu in Arabia. Some scholars    quoting from the Reconstruction of Religious Thought in Islam,      by Dr. Allama Muhammad Iqbal have been asserting that, “Iqbal’s thought was unwittingly the fore-runner of idea behind Organization of Islamic Conference as an inter-governmental organization”. Scholars regarded this as the first ever common platform since rival Caliphates in Baghdad and Qurtuba: 750 AD opted for separate development.’
The Organization of the Islamic Conference undoubtedly provides the leaders of the Muslim nations around the world a common platform for ‘inter-governmental dialogue and action.’  But   what is coming in its way for playing an effective role has been its failing to find a common voice.
 
Excellencies, we understand that the organization with all its inherent difficulties has been ‘projecting a Muslim world view.’ It has been articulating its views on Kashmir and these views by all standards are the views of the Muslim world on Kashmir.
I must endorse that the Organization of Islamic Conference for the past 20 years has been meeting on Kashmir. Like the UN this organization of 57 countries also does not “recognize the finality of the accession of the state of Jammu and Kashmir with Union of India.” It also believes that that “India’s non-cooperation and the passage of time do not erode UN obligation”. The organization has time and again been reaffirming that ‘the Kashmiri right of self-determination is an inalienable right which has been acknowledged by UN Security Council resolutions. As such, it constitutes an obligation for all members of the UN, and in particular, the designated parties to the dispute, India and Pakistan. Obligations stemming from UN Security Council resolutions are binding.” 
The Organization of Islamic Countries is a very potent body, powerful enough to influence the global decisions and enforce its own agenda but what has been preventing it to perform the role history has cast for it. Why it has not so  for succeeded in persuading India for living by its promise and conceding right to self-determination to the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The reason as I see   has been that majority of member countries of OIC have not been living by the resolutions adopted on Kashmir in its meetings and summits in their relations with India. Kashmir is yet become a determinant in the relations of OIC member countries with India. And it is this policy of the Muslim World in particular and world in general that has encouraged perpetually denying right to self-determination to the people of Jammu and Kashmir and perusing its policy of persecution and subjugation against Kashmiris.
I humbly request all the member countries of OIC more particularly Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt to make resolution of Kashmir as an important determinant and guiding principle in their relations with India.
With these words I thank you,

Syed Ali Geelani
Chairman All Parties Hurriyat Conference    

 
 

 

 

 

 

To,

The Parliament Members of Pakistan

Dear friends,

Assalaam u Alaikum,

Today I am addressing you on behalf of people of Jammu and Kashmir, who for last 64 years have been striving for peace, justice, freedom and dignity. During these 64 years we have suffered immensely at the hands of Indian armed forces, who are implementing the policy of subjugation and control over our lives, resources, culture, and dignity.

Indian state's remorseless policies of violence have resulted in the death of 1 lakh people in last two decades and its tyrannical policies have facilitated the torture of more than 2 lakh people. Indian parliament has provided moral, political, legal immunity to its troops, thus providing an incentive to their violence. This moral impunity has encouraged Indian soldiers to molest and rape thousands of our women. This political impunity has boosted the moral of Indian soldiers to maim thousands of people. This legal impunity has facilitated the disappearance of 10,000 men and custodial killing of thousands more. The conduct of Indian state has allowed the secret burials of thousands, resulting into unmarked graves and mass graves.

Today I want to specifically remind you of how Indian state policy of militarization has produced unmarked graves and mass graves in Jammu and Kashmir. Officially the Jammu and Kashmir government admits there are 2730 unmarked graves, out of which 574 persons after being killed and buried after giving them the name of foreign militants have been identified as local residents. The number of unmarked graves is far more than what has been acknowledged by the government, as the investigation has not gone beyond 38 out of 100s of graveyards, where unmarked graves exist.

In Poonch and Rajouri districts the State Human Rights Commission is investigating into the presence of 3844 unmarked graves. So far the investigation is going on in only 5 districts and numbers of unmarked graves and mass graves are more then 6500; imagine what could be the total number of unmarked graves and mass graves in 20 districts of Jammu and Kashmir.

Many of the disappeared persons may have been buried in these graves. Disappearance is a continuing crime till the dead bodies are found. The family members of 10,000 disappeared persons are hoping amidst hopelessness.

The Indian government boosts that they have managed to control the situation in Kashmir and peace is returning according to them. This is how they deal with dissent in Indianised democracy? This silence of unmarked graves and mass graves, is what they call peace?

India calls these atrocities, as a result of aberrations and violations by some black sheep, but the truth is that these crimes are an institutionalized and systematic response of the Indian state against the popular uprising of people of Jammu and Kashmir for freedom. If the present Police Chief Kuldeep Khoda himself is involved in the murder of 3 civilians and later in getting their bodies disappeared, then one can say with certainty that the Indian rule is to kill, to brutalize and to terrorize people of Jammu and Kashmir, so that their will to attain freedom is crushed.

These mass graves and unmarked graves have shaken people across the world, including ofcourse those in Pakistan also. Mass graves and unmarked graves are symbols of war crimes.

I urge the Pakistani parliamentarians to initiate a debate in Pakistani parliament on the issue of unmarked graves, mass graves and all kinds of crimes being perpetrated on the people of Jammu and Kashmir and adopt a resolution to assert to end this shameful and tyrannical chapter of occupation of Jammu and Kashmir.

We urge the Pakistani people to protect the sacrifices of people of Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir during last 64 years and not allow any dilution or laxity in the principled stand of Pakistan vis-à-vis Jammu and Kashmir.

We are grateful for the support of the Pakistani people and expect that politicians and all sections of the Pakistani society will continue to extend its moral, political and diplomatic support to the Jammu and Kashmir freedom struggle.

Wassalaam-u-Alaikum

Syed Ali Geelani


Chairman
All Parties Hurriyat Conference
Jammu and Kashmir,
Srinagar