WHO Asked To Help Release Kashmiri Prisoners From Indian Jails

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 23rd Apr, 2021 ) :Legal Forum for Oppressed Voices of Kashmir (LFOVK) has sought the urgent intervention of the Director General of Geneva-based World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to put pressure on India to release all illegally detained Kashmiri political leaders and activists.

The LFOVK in a letter addressed to the WHO Director General, called for taking immediate action to address the plight of political prisoners of IIOJK, languishing in various jails of India amid the COVID-19 Tsunami which has shaken India, Kashmir Media Service reported.

In the letter, the LFOVK requested his immediate intervention to release these political prisoners who have been jailed just for seeking UN-granted right to self- determination in at least 15 resolutions passed by the UNGA and UNSC since 1948.

It said, it has now been twenty months since India ordered a military siege and annexed the IIOJK by unilaterally revoking the special status of Kashmir. The military establishment of India has responded with an increasingly brutal crackdown defined by some of the worst human rights violations including unlawful and arbitrary arrests and detentions, torture, and extrajudicial killings.

This includes the bloodiest Cordon and Search Operations (CASOs). Kashmir's health care workers and Journalists, in particular, have been systematically targeted by the occupying army, it added.

The LFOVK said, the Indian military's CASOs are also generating a public health crisis with regional and international impact.

By launching military operations and by persecuting civilian population, the Indian military has critically impeded Kashmir`s normal health care system � including its COVID-19 testing, treatment, and immunization efforts. The most pressing need right now is protection of Kashmiri political prisoners who have been lodged in different jails across India, it maintained.

It said, "We urge your office and other humanitarian organizations to immediately launch a global effort to offer additional protection, support, and services to Kashmiri political prisoners." The LFOVK said, since Kashmir is a cold-to-medium-weather region, the incarceration of Kashmiri political prisoners in India makes it doubly difficult for them to be jailed at one place in hot temperatures.

It said, now, India is caught in a massive spike of coronavirus with close to 300,000 cases and more 2000 casualties every day. It has put at risk lives of Kashmiri political prisoners who have no criminal case against them but have been denied basic/fundamental rights because they advocate fulfillment of UN-granted right to self-determination for Kashmiris, it deplored.

The illegally detained Hurriyat leaders languishing in different jails of India and the territory included Muhammad Ashraf Sehrai, Muhammad Yasin Malik, Shabbir Ahmad Shah, Masarat Alam Butt, Altaf Ahmad Shah, Peer Saifullah, Raja Maraj-uddin Kalwal, Ghulam Muhammad Butt, Ayaz Akbar, Farooq Ahmad, Shahid-ul-Islam, Syed Shakeel, Nayeem Ahmad Khan, Zahoor Ahmad Watali, Shahid-ul-Islam and. Ashiq Hussain Fakhtoo.