Toronto, Canada: November 6, 2010 – On the occasion of US President Barack Obama’s trip to India (November 6-9) for strengthening the US-India relationship “a defining partnership of the 21st century,” Kashmiri-Canadian Council (KCC) has urged him to help India and Pakistan to transform the unresolved Kashmir issue from being a bone of contention to a bridge of understanding for peace and prosperity of South Asia’s billion plus people. Mr. Mushtaq A. Jeelani, Executive Director of the KCC, in a letter to President Obama expressed his serious concern over the deteriorating human rights situation in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir and lack of progress in finding a peacefully negotiated settlement of the Kashmir issue. The Executive Director wrote: More than in India, in Kashmir people are enthusiastic about his upcoming visit to India. The people of Kashmir hope and believe that the US President would candidly address the deteriorating human rights situation in Kashmir during his forthcoming meeting with the Prime Minister of India Dr. Manmohan Singh and to press him to honour his promise of “zero tolerance” for human rights violations in Kashmir. Mr. Jeelani underlined that Indian Prime Minister made a solemn promise to the people of Kashmir, unfortunately, the promise has been observed in breach. He further urged President Obama to remember the plight of hundreds of thousands of orphans and thousands of widows and half-widows in Kashmir in his meetings in India. Mr. Jeelani reminded the President that the Kashmir issue has dominated the geopolitics of South Asia for nearly 63 years because of continuing rivalry between India and Pakistan. They have fought three major wars since their independence from Britain in 1947, two of them over the disputed region of Kashmir. The dispute between the rivals is the root of the nuclear arms race, which has resulted in the diversion of resources from human development to militarization. Unfortunately, the people of Kashmir are caught in the middle of this deadly tug-of-war. He said that the uprising against foreign occupation and alien domination that began in 1989 as a result of 1987’s rigged elections has been worsened by the brutal oppression of the Indian occupation forces that has transformed Kashmir into one of the most militarised places on the planet, has led to the deaths of more than 100,000 Kashmiris. The Executive Director underlined that since October 1989, the people of Kashmir continue to live under one of the most brutal military occupations in the world. The 700,000 strong Indian forces have been mercilessly killing defenceless Kashmiris to silence their demand for freedom, justice, and respect for human rights. They continue to carry out arbitrary detention, summary executions, custodial killings, extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, rape, sexual exploitation, torture and fake encounters. Generations of Kashmiris have grown up under the shadow of the gun; not a single family is unaffected; property worth hundreds of millions of dollars has been destroyed and the suffering and devastation continues unabated that has inflicted loss of life and destruction on an unprecedented scale, sadly drawing no significant attention from the international community. Mr. Jeelani said that impunity has become a licence for the Indian occupation forces to wreak havoc with the lives of Kashmiris. The deliberate and unprovoked attacks and other patterns of abuse have all become too frequent to report. No perpetrator has ever been prosecuted in a real manner, despite the fact that such crimes have been extensively documented by many international human rights organisations including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. He congratulated the President for his address to the UN General Assembly, “… that freedom, justice and peace for the world must begin with freedom, justice, and peace in the lives of individual human beings. And for the United States, this is a matter of moral and pragmatic necessity… So we stand up for universal values because it’s the right thing to do. But we also know from experience that those who defend these values for their people have been our closest friends and allies, while those who have denied those rights – whether terrorist groups or tyrannical governments – have chosen to be our adversaries.” Mr. Jeelani reminded the President of a recent (Nov. 3, 10) statement by Human Rights Watch: “In Jammu and Kashmir… government troops have committed torture, enforced disappearances, and targeted killings disguised as shoot-outs. These abuses are facilitated by Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which gives the army widespread powers to search, arrest, and use lethal force, while assuring immunity from prosecution. The possible unnecessary use of lethal force resulted in the deaths of more than 100 people, many of them children, during sometimes-violent protests in mid-2010 in Jammu and Kashmir. ‘The street protests in Kashmir this summer reflected the anger and dismay over human rights violations that have occurred over two decades of conflict,’ Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch said. ‘President Obama should not pretend unrest in Kashmir is an internal matter and ignore the expectations of many Kashmiris who want him to call publicly for an end to abusive security operations.’” He underlined that it is high time India realised the fact that control over a region alone does not mean sovereignty over a chunk of land. It is the people who make up a nation and if they are perpetually alienated, any territorial supremacy achieved through brute force alone can never guarantee long-term peace. The Executive Director emphasised the perception that the Kashmir issue is a bilateral matter between India and Pakistan is unfounded. Kashmir is not a territorial or bilateral issue. It is about the future of 15 million people with their own history of independence; their own language and culture. This has been an explicit explanation for the failure to resolve the Kashmir issue through on-again and off-again bilateral dialogue for the past 63 years. The people of Kashmir have lost complete faith in the bilateral process of India and Pakistan and their ability to resolve the issue. Mr. Jeelani reminded the President that 15 million people of Kashmir are yearning for peace, justice and freedom. They want a just and dignified peace that guarantees total freedom from foreign occupation and alien domination. Their struggle to achieve that right to self-determination will not extinguish until India and Pakistan accept its exercise by the people of Jammu and Kashmir. He said that the conflict in Kashmir is a “political” and “human” tragedy and the world community, including India and Pakistan, have overlooked this critically important human dimension of the issue. The Kashmiris’ demand is simple and in accordance with international law: implementation of the United Nations resolutions for a plebiscite to determine the future status of the disputed region in a peaceful and democratic way. Whatever the outcome, it will be impartial and binding for all the three parties – the people of Kashmir, India and Pakistan. “KCC thinks that to help move the process forward, Washington must assist the two nuclear rivals to rapidly work to build bridges of trust by tackling the longstanding issue of Kashmir in forthright manner and demand participation of Kashmiris as equal partners in determining a negotiated solution of the issue,” continued Mr. Jeelani. “KCC believes that the United States of America is in a position to play a key role in bringing an end to this longstanding political conflict in the interest of peace and prosperity of South Asia’s billion plus people,” concluded Mr. Jeelani. “This will start a new era of coexistence between India and Pakistan; it will be a source of peace and stability and prosperity for the entire world.”