US-based Kashmiri group asks UN to intervene for release of political prisoners

Hurriyat leader Ashraf Sehrai

By A Representative
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not ended despite the end of the despotic Dogra dynasty rule, the fate of Kashmiris changed for the worse, as it has been replaced by tyrannies of successive Indian regimes with various garbs of democracy”, the statement said, adding, by abrogating the “nominal autonomy” of the state on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.”

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.

Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.

From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

By Tersina Maria Toppo* A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.

Counterview

Search This Blog