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| Hurriyat leader Ashraf Sehrai |
The Washington DC-based World Kashmir Awareness Forum (WKAF) has pleaded with the UN Secretary General and the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights to urge India to “unconditionally release” all political prisoners, including Ashraf Sehrai, Yasin Malik, Mian Abdul Qayyum, Shabir Ahmed Shah, Musarat Aalam and others. Ashraf Sehrai, a separatist Hurriyat leader, was detained under the Public Safety Act (PSA) on Sunday.
Also asking the US government and Congressional leaders to heed what it calls “unbearable plight of hundreds of senior Kashmiri political leaders who are suffering from serious health issues”, WKAF, which claims to be committed to working for the basic human and political rights of people of Jammu & Kashmir through all peaceful means, said, “The Modi regime’s goal is to totally decapitate the political leadership of Kashmir.”
A WKAF statement, issued on the occasion of the 89th anniversary of the Martyrs Day of July 13, 1931, said, Kashmiris throughout the world observe this day to “reaffirm their resolve to continue their struggle for self-determination” by paying homage to the 22 innocent Kashmiris “who fell to the bullets of Maharaja Hari Singh’s troops one after the other in cold blood, in front of Srinagar Central Jail.”
“WKAF believes that their suffering has not ended despite the end of the despotic Dogra dynasty rule, the fate of Kashmiris changed for the worse, as it has been replaced by tyrannies of successive Indian regimes with various garbs of democracy”, the statement said, adding, by abrogating the “nominal autonomy” of the state on August 5, 2019, “India is implemented a settler-colonialist apartheid project in Kashmir.”
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