JI warns govt against changing AJK status

ISLAMABAD: Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Ameer Senator Sirajul Haq has warned the government against making any change in the constitutional status of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), saying the steps would prove fatal for the freedom movement in Indian occupied territory.

“Any move by Islamabad to change the status of AJK and GB through constitutional amendment would tantamount to backstabbing Kashmiris and facilitating New Delhi’s plan to change the demography of the held valley,” he said while addressing the oath taking ceremony of JI AJK chapter Ameer Dr Khalid Mahmood Khan here on Saturday.

Sirajul Haq vowed that the people of Pakistan and the JI would never allow rulers to damage the Kashmir freedom movement at any cost. He said the people of Pakistan loved the armed forces because they saw the army as protector of both the country’s boundaries and Kashmiris.

He, however, regretted that no bold step was taken by the rulers so far to challenge the Indian designs in the region.

He said the BJP regime was bent upon turning majority of Kashmiri Muslims into minority in the valley. He said thousands of Kashmiri youth were sent to jails, countless were missing as worst crimes against humanity continued in the area after the abrogation of status of the Kashmir by India. The international community, he said, was silent and Pakistani rulers had also done nothing for the jugular vein of the country following India’s August 5 move.

The people of AJK and IOK were looking towards Pakistan for help, he said, highlighting the need for devising a joint strategy for the Kashmir freedom from Indian yoke.

JI leaders Abdur Rasheed Turabi, Ijaz Afzal, Raja Fazal and other also spoke on occasion and vowed the people of Kashmir would continue their struggle against Indian occupation. They said they had firm belief that sun of freedom would soon rise on Indian Occupied Kashmir.