RIGHTS: ‘Unrest Grows in Pakistani Kashmir’

By Sanjay Suri Reprint | | Print |

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Jan 23 2006 (IPS) - Opposition to continuing Pakistani occupation of parts of Kashmir is rising, says a rebel leader in exile.

”An All Parties National Alliance has been formed to press for the rights of people in what Pakistan likes to call Azad (Independent) Kashmir but we call Pakistan Occupied Kashmir,” Shaukat Ali Kashmiri told IPS.

”Many nationalist Kashmiri parties have joined this alliance,” Kashmiri, chairman of the United Kashmir People’s National Party (UKPNP), told IPS on a visit to London. Kashmiri, who was twice arrested and tortured by Pakistani forces, now lives as a refugee in Switzerland.

Pakistani Kashmir is an area of about 4,000 square miles. This is besides the larger region of Kashmir called the Northern Areas which are also under Pakistani control.

”For almost 60 years now the people of Pakistan Occcupied Kashmir have had no political rights,” Kashmiri said. ”There are no independent daily newspapers, the security and intelligence agencies rule the area, and local Kashmiri people who want to run their own government and oppose the Pakistani government are denied jobs and any role in government or the political process.”

Any Kashmiri who wants to contest the local assembly elections first has to swear allegiance to Pakistan, Kashmiri said.

”There is growing political discontent and a growing movement,” Mumtaz Khan, vice-chairman of the International Kashmir Alliance told IPS. Khan is now a political refugee in Canada.

Too much of world attention is focused on Kashmir on the Indian side, Khan said.

”If we are hearing about the Indian controlled Kashmir, that indicates the presence of the media, the presence of democratic institutions there, the presence of other institutions that allow those people to raise their voice,” Khan said.

”On the other side no such institutions exist, and especially media does not exist at all in Pakistani controlled, which is called as Azad Kashmir,” he said. ”No foreigners including even Pakistanis are allowed to enter into that part of Kashmir. So you can guess that if there is no such permission, what would the human rights position be.”

Besides the lack of international media there is no effective local media either, he said. ”We don’t have local media there, and we entirely depend on the Pakistani media, and the Pakistani media you know is not a free media. It is media as long as Pakistan is concerned. Once the question of Kashmir comes in then that stops. The (security and intelligence) agencies are heavily involved in suppressing the media, suppressing the political movement, spreading other discontent.”

The United Kashmir Peoples National Front and the International Kashmir Alliance are both trying to raise awareness abroad of the situation within Pakistani Kashmir. The groups have been raising the matters with increasing energy, the leaders say.

But any groups resisting Pakistani authority run into strong opposition, Kashmiri said. ”Obviously the agencies do not want people in the region to become aware of their rights, or to act on them, or that people should be organised and then begin to protest more.”

The Pakistani political party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) has long campaigned for the rights of the Mohajirs from its headquarters in London. The Mohajirs, literally meaning migrants, are Muslims who migrated from India to live in Pakistan after the partition of India in 1947.

The party is led by Altaf Hussain from the headquarters in London. The Kashmiri groups say they plan to build up a strong political base abroad in order to campaign for the rights of Pakistani Kashmiris.