On 26th of October 2011, the International Council for Human Development (ICHD) organised a protest demonstration in front of Indian embassy in Holland. While raising the slogans for the rights and self determination for the people of Kashmir, the demonstrators made an appeal to the international community to come forward and pressurised India to grant the Kashmiris their inalienable right to self determination. The demonstration was organised with the active support of Kashmir Centre, Holland on the “Day of Occupation” of Kashmir by the Indian forces in 1947.
Leading the demonstration, chairperson of ICHD, Ali Raza Syed and executive director, Kashmir Centre-Holland, Dr. Zeib Khan handed over a protest memorandum to the Indian embassy officials. The memorandum asked the India to withdraw its forces from the held Kashmir and allow the Kashmiris to decide freely about their political future. The memorandum also demanded impartial investigations of thousands of unnamed mass graves that had been discovered in different parts of the held Kashmir. The memorandum demanded that the culprits should be brought to justice according to the international laws.
The speakers said that the India was flagrant violator of the international laws as it was protecting the perpetrators of heinous crimes such as killings, murders, illegal detentions, imprisonments and general coercion. On the issue of mass graves, the demonstrators demanded the international community to send their observers to investigate the issue. The speakers referred to the article 9 of the UDHR while saying that Indian authorities were putting the prominent leaders and political workers under illegal detention only for speaking their minds and demanding their right to self determination. The speakers demanded for Kashmir the same as it was given to Namibia, East Timor, Montengero and Southern Sudan; the self determination conducted and monitored by United Nations and international community.
They said that peace in South Asia, in general, and Sub-Continent, in particular, was too important an issue to left to two rivals that are equipped with the nuclear arms. The speakers urged both the governments of India and Pakistan to include all Kashmiri leadership in the process of negotiations on the issue. They were of the view that no fair solution of the Kashmir issue was possible without the involvement of Kashmiri leadership.