Christof Heyn's statement substantiated our views - Farooq Rehmani

Islamabad 01, April 2012: Chairman Jammu and Kashmir People’s Freedom League Muhammad Farooq Rehmani, has warmly hailed UN Special Rapporteur Christof Heyn’s preliminary statement saying that “the Armed Forces Special Powers Act allows the state to override rights and has no role in a democracy.”

Muhammad Farooq Rehmani said that the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions substantiated Kashmiris’ views on draconian laws in vogue in the state for over 2 decades. He said  “ India should have  abolished these harsh and inhuman laws since, but now India must heed to the UN expert’s advice urging it “to repeal a law that gives its military sweeping powers to act in troubled areas like Himalayan Kashmir region and parts of the insurgency wracked northeast.”

Muhammad Farooq Rehmani said that India’s crimes against humanity in violation of UN Rights conventions and Geneva additional protocols were horrible continuing unabated for the last two decades as the massed 700,000 over troops and paratroopers having unbridled powers of detaining, torturing, forcibly disappearing and killing and staging gun battles as pretexts to kill suspects and civilians with impunity don’t listen to any world institution. He said that in the heavily militarized region of Kashmir the State Government had only nominal powers and the Delhi Government had never accepted State’s recommendations of prosecuting the soldier’s or officers who were involved in extrajudicial killings, gang rapes and other crimes.

Muhammad Farooq Rehmani said that neither the ending of militancy nor the much -hyped people-to-people-contacts and new trade and travel measures between India and Pakistan brought spring showers of peace and honour to the helpless kashmiris in the last 8 years. “Peace with human rights and civil liberties and a durable resolution of the Kashmir dispute was still a pipe- dream and hardly any Kashmiri believed in political rhetoric,” he said.

Muhammad Farooq Rehmani said that the only way out was to grant the kashmiris their birthright and political role, pull out army, repeal black laws and above all take back all fake currency(political) from this political market and seek help of international community through the UNO without further loss of time. “If India and Pakistan don’t do it today, circumstances of invisible nature may do it without their consent in near future. After 9/11 many in South Asia drew hasty conclusions about Kashmir and so called new world order, but today its different and not in their control,” he remarked.