Kashmir Solidarity Day, February 5, 2024

Feb 5, 2024 | Press Release

World Kashmir Awareness Forum

Millions of people around the world stood in solidarity with the disenfranchised people of Indian Occupied Kashmir and brothers and sisters in Gaza and West Bank who are suffering unprecedented carnage under Israeli occupation.

Kashmiris and Palestinians have a shared history of seven decades of foreign occupation and settler colonialism. Hundreds of thousands have been ruthlessly murdered while the world has witnessed with horror, but not lifted a finger against the inhumanity of the world powers.

In Indian Occupied Kashmir, the right to self-determination—which is guaranteed by multiple UN Security Council resolutions—continues to be unimplemented and blatantly ignored.

Indian occupation is an ongoing dark chapter of successive Indian regimes with an ongoing brutal dehumanizing campaign against millions of indigenous people of Jammu and Kashmir

Basic rights of free speech, free press, free association and free travel are almost non-existent in the IOK. Kashmiris at home have their rights severely curtailed and Kashmiris living in the diaspora live in fear for their lives and lives of their families living in Kashmir. An atmosphere of uncertainty and fear has led to emotional trauma and a high suicide rate among the youth of 18.3%. The military industrial complex is largely responsible for the high depression and suicide. There is no free space for people to communicate freely to express their emotions. Kashmiri political leaders, venerated journalists and even famous human rights defenders like Khurram Parvez Remain in jails of India without an iota of due process.

The Modi regime alongside his extremist Hindutva regime and brute Hindu Sainiks can try to drive millions of Kashmiri civilians down the path of complete destitution and destruction like their complicit fascist friends of Israel are doing to the Palestinians. But the civilized world including the Middle East and the far east will always speak up for both, the Kashmiris and the Palestinians.