ISLAMABAD: Minister for Safron and Narcotics Control Shehryar Afridi has urged the world to act and save 10 million Kashmiris locked in the biggest jail on earth called India-held Kashmir (IHK).

Addressing the participants of a procession taken out by Pakistani and Kashmiri expatriates in the German city of Hannover to express solidarity with the people of IHK, he said that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was hell-bent on carrying out genocide of Kashmiri people following in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler.

According to a statement issued here, Mr Afridi said that [Indian Prime Minister Narendra] Modi was Hitler of Asia who was involved in genocide of Kashmiris and minorities in India to create a Greater India. He said the world needed to intervene to avoid human catastrophe in Kashmir as the presence of over a million Indian forces in disputed territory had turned the valley into a massive jail where around 10 million Kashmiris had been kept under detention.

He said Kashmiris had no link with the outside world as all communications, food supplies and medicines had been cut off. He said the human rights violations were a major challenge for the world conscience as Kashmir was a nuclear flashpoint where two nuclear-armed neighbours were locked in a decades-old conflict on Kashmir.

“However, what Modi doesn’t know is that these gags and detentions can’t break the commitment and resolve of Kashmiri people for freedom. India has killed over 100,000 Kashmiri youths but the flame of freedom has further spread,” he said.

The minister urged the world community to intervene in the situation as children and the old needed food and medicines.

He said cutting off of communications was aimed at keeping the world in the dark over the genocide in the occupied valley.

Pakistan cannot be a silent spectator to the gravity of the situation, he said, adding that “we are carrying the message of peace and going to the world capitals to apprise the world of the situation in Indian occupied Kashmir”.

The world conscience needs to be alive to the situation as world peace is linked to the situation in Kashmir. World cannot allow two neighbouring countries armed with nuclear ­weapons to remain caught in the ­conflict on Kashmir, he added.

The minister said the recent special session of the United Nations Security Council on Kashmir reflected that the world was now alive to the Kashmir issue more than ever. “But we will not sit idle now. More parliamentarians will be visiting world capitals. We will keep hammering the world conscience till the United Nations intervenes in Kashmir situation and Kashmiris are given their right to choose between Pakistan and India,” he said.

He said the recent human rights reports of the UN suggested that Indian forces were involved in ­systematic genocide of Kashmiris.

Mr Afridi said Pakistan would raise the Kashmir issue at all world forums.

Published in Dawn, August 19th, 2019