Shehryar Afridi urges youth to become voices, story tellers of gagged Kashmiris
Lahore: Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Kashmir Shehryar Khan Afridi has urged Pakistani youth to become a voice of the unheard people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) whose voices are being gagged through black laws.
Addressing the participants of a seminar held here at Lahore College for Women University (LCWU) with regard to the Kashmir Solidarity Day, Shehryar Afridi said that the prosperous world needs to build pressure on India and compel it to end its genocide policy against the Kashmiri people.
He said black laws including the UAPA are being used to suppress freedom of expression and freedom of speech.
He said that Pakistani youth needs to become voice of the Kashmiri people whose voice is being gagged by the occupational regime of India.
He said the youth should become story- tellers of Kashmir as the world needs to be informed about the true stories of Kashmir.
Afridi said that Kashmir is a human issue which is wrongly being portrayed as a political and geographical conflict in South Asia.
“The world needs to see Kashmir as a humanitarian issue and Kashmiris should be given the right to self determination,” he said.
He said that the world needs to be told about the miseries of half widows and orphans of Kashmir. He said since the Kashmiris are unheard, the youth needs to become the voices of the unheard and the gagged by becoming bloggers, vlogers, story tellers, social media activists, anchors, YouTubers and journalists and tell the stories of Kashmir.
Shehryar Khan Afridi said that successive reports of the United Nations Human Rights Council and other human rights institutions have pointed out that Indian occupational forces are committing war crimes in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. However, Afridi said practical action is missing in the world reaction towards India. He said that the Pakistani women need to learn from the resistance and persistence of the women of Kashmir.
He said that Kashmiri mothers are standing like rock and encouraging their sons to offer sacrifices for the freedom struggle.
He said that Indian atrocities being committed against the fearless and brave people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu have failed to break the Kashmiri resistance and Kashmiris are adding new chapters of resistance in the human history.
He urged the academia to help generate new content on Kashmir so as new and strong narrative building process on Kashmir could be started.
He said that academia needs to accelerate research and youth should be encouraged to write papers on Kashmiri freedom struggle and the psychological issues of Kashmiris.
