Pakistan says India copying Israeli settlement model

ISLAMABAD

The chairman of the Pakistani parliament’s committee on Kashmir accused India on Thursday of replicating the Israeli occupation model in Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir.

Shehryar Khan Afridi, speaking at a seminar in the capital Islamabad, said the world must stand up to the Indian atrocities in the occupied valley.

"Before Aug. 5, 2019, the Indian regime had sent its top police and civil bureaucrats posted in Jammu and Kashmir to Israel for learning, training and then brought [them] back to replicate the Israeli model in Jammu and Kashmir," Afridi claimed.

"Among those included infamous police officer, Imtiaz Hussain, who is blamed for killing 200 Kashmiri Muslims. Imtiaz Hussain was sent to Israel to understand the Israeli security system before Aug. 5, 2019, and on return, he was posted as security in-charge in Srinagar to suppress protests in Jammu and Kashmir," he added.

On the date, India scrapped Kashmir's special status.

Afridi said Israel's settlement colonialism is being duplicated in Jammu and Kashmir in blatant violation of UN resolutions.

"4,000,000 new domicile certificates have been issued," he said. "500,000 of which have been issued to people from mainland India who have never visited Kashmir."

He claimed that non-local Indians are provided tourism opportunities and forestland is leased to them, but Kashmiris are kept away.

"India is economically strangulating Kashmiris and dispossessing the Kashmiris in blatant violation of the UN resolutions,” he added.

Pakistan-administered Jammu and Kashmir President Masood Khan, Turkey's Ambassador Ihsan Mustafa Yurdakul, Ambassador of Palestine Ahmad Rabaie and Ambassador of Azerbaijan Ali Fikrat Oglu Alizada, and Pakistani government officials also spoke on the occasion.

Speakers observed that the Kashmir and Palestine issues are instances of the worst human rights violations in the modern world. Both issues are outstanding and as old as the United Nations itself, but they have not been resolved.