Kashmir issue confronts the human conscience
By: Ali Raza Syed
Distinguished speakers and guests,
I am delighted to welcome you on behalf of organisers and volunteers event, which, in my opinion, has many unparalleled and unprecedented features for a peace initiative directed towards seeking the resolution of a conflict that has all the potential to develop into a threat to the existence of entire South Asia. This way, we are gathered here as an effort to safe the collective future of the planet earth and human race as many leading think tanks and peace organisations have termed the Kashmir as the nuclear flashpoint of South Asia.
I apologise to you for starting my deliberations, and this event, by a negative image of extremely horrendous and unacceptable implications. But then, for me, this is the point where all the arguments for the peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue converge themselves. Yes, the misery and injustice in Kashmir is not only the problem of a secluded community. The Kashmir issue is not only a conflict amongst many disputed borders existing on the face of the planet earth. The disappeared persons or raped women or brutalised children of Kashmir are not more important than unfortunate victims of the conflicts in Africa, Asia, Middle East or other parts of the world. Indeed, we can see so many parallels of the nature, dynamics, claims and counter claims, state repressions and victimisations in Occupied Kashmir.
But Kashmir is not only a conflict. It relates to the collective future of human kind and it relates to every peace lover of the world. This is an issue that put questions on the collective human conscience; the question of power and justice. We believe that the justice should prevail upon the power. We believe that the fair play and honesty should prevail upon the petty political interests and we believe that the positive human values should supersede the power of greed, chauvinism, religious extremism and outright repression.
I am not going to narrate here the history of the Kashmir nor will I refer to the numerous calls from the UN or international human rights organisation during last six decades. Rather I will only say that every human life lost in this conflict, every respectable woman raped or every injustice is the injustice done to more than one and half billion people of India, Pakistan and entire South Asia. This is the unfortunate region that is made hostage of this conflict for almost seven decades. This is the region that is lurking under extreme poverty, decease, illiteracy, bad governance, corruption. This is the region whose states are compelled to spend their meagre resources in building large armies and its lethal armaments including missile and nuclear programs. I will say that people of this region deserve totally opposite to it.
I will not delve in details in the horrible issue of the mass graves. I don’t need to do this as the facts speak for themselves. More than 10,000 innocent people have been disappeared. I want to raise a simple point of common sense. And this relates to Indian government’s refusal to conduct DNA tests. At one level, they claim that everybody killed by Security Forces was a militant or an outsider. Well, proving their identity, by DNA tests, shall only strengthen their claim beyond doubt. However, it is intriguing to see that Indians are not interested in proving their asserting. Perhaps they know that this assertion is as baseless as their claim on Kashmir.
I will emphasise again that the peace in South Asia is the primary emotional force behind some of us who founded this organisation literarily without any financial resources. We had only passion on which we could count on as our asset. We were few individuals without any provision of having an office or equipments or luxury as official transport. Yet, we had some strength. We knew that the highest guardian of human rights, the UN has unambiguous support for the hapless Kashmiri people.
We knew that numerous international human rights organisations have recorded their testimonies in the favour of Kashmiri people. We knew that all the humanist forums and individuals are always ready to support any transparent initiative for achieving justice to any hapless community or nation of the world. After short period of three years, the ICHD is seen as a success story and your presence here is the biggest proof of this. No other pride is bigger than this for the little group of ICHD founders, present here.
However, it is only a start for us. We have a long journey ahead. I believe that we shall continue marching towards the destiny if we continue having trust of the true humanists and transparent international forums, which are represented here. I believe that we shall achieve the one million signature campaign and bring this conflict to the agenda of EU parliament. I believe that we shall wield the human rights advocates, peace promoters and activists of the world around us. Our trust in human conscience is unshakable.
More than anybody else, my thanks are due to Mr. Sajjad Haider Karim who is the host of this event. In fact, he is the first example of the reality that honestly done efforts automatically bring honest people towards you. I must say that M arjan Lucas and Sadia Mir are the founder strengths of ICHD. I am grateful to them and I am thankful to innumerable MEPs, friends, colleagues, journalists and scholars who are supporting us. I thank you all for coming here and filling us with great excitement, contentment and happiness.