OIC HR commission to visit Kashmir, AR Turabi

OIC HR commission to visit Kashmir, AR Turabi

JEDDAH, Feb 22: The Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), expressing reservations over sheer human rights violations in occupied Kashmir, has announced to send a team of its commission on human rights to the territory.

The OIC Deputy Secretary General and Special Representative on Kashmir, Abdullh bin Abdur Rehman Alam while talking to Amir Jamaat-e-Islami Azad Jammu & Kashmir Abdur Rashid Turabi, who called on him at his office in Jeddah, said that Kashmir was a matter of grave concern for the Muslim Ummah as well as the international community. He lamented that the issue could not be resolved even after the lapse of 64 years. Rehman Alam said that peace in South Asia and the world at large would remain at peril unless the Kashmir dispute was resolved.

Abdullah bin Abdul Rehman said that more steps would be taken in consultation with the OIC contact group on Kashmir for resolution of the longstanding dispute, adding that the OIC would write a letter to the Indian government to lodge formal protest against not issuing visa to the veteran Kashmiri Hurriyet leader, Syed Ali Gilani.

On the occasion, Abdur Rashid Turabi informed the OIC Deputy Secretary General about the current human rights situation in the occupied territory and urged the OIC to take concrete steps for settlement of the dispute. He said that OIC member countries should review trade and diplomatic relations with India if New Delhi was not prepared to grant the Kashmiris their inalienable right to self-determination and stop human rights violations in the territory. Turabi also urged the OIC to send a fact finding mission to occupied Kashmir to make an assessment of the ground situation by itself in the area.

Turabi handed over a letter of Syed Ali Gilani to the OIC Deputy Secretary General, in which the forum has been requested to take practical steps for the solution of the Kashmir dispute.

Turabi informed the OIC about of hundreds of Kashmiris’ unmarked graves discovered recently in occupied Kashmir. He said that Ali Gilani remained most of the time under house arrest and was not allowed to visit abroad even to Saudi Arabia for performing Umrah and Hajj.