Global News

7 August 2019:  The World Sikh Parliament unreservedly condemns India’s brazen attempt this week to override international law and democratic legitimacy by unilaterally purporting to divide and annex Kashmir. These moves by New Delhi were overseen by a massive military build-up aimed at terrorising the very people whose destiny, like that of the Sikhs in recent decades, is being stolen by a Hindutva agenda bent on creating a Hindu state extending well in to the territories of neighbouring national homelands. They were taken with absolutely no attempt to engage with Kashmiris or the UN (which has recently, quite rightly, reiterated the need to respect Kashmiri self-determination), and underline India’s record as a serial violator of fundamental human rights.

Having experienced the same pattern of betrayal – Sikhs were promised a national homeland in independent India only to be denied even recognition as a nation as well as a distinct religion post 1947 – we now also apprehend a massive military crackdown of genocidal proportions in Kashmir, as was used to suppress the Sikh self-determination struggle in the decade after India’s invasion of Punjab in June 1984. The international community must intervene urgently to prevent the deaths of tens of thousands of Kashmiri non-combatants at the hands of PM Modi’s henchmen.

Just as importantly, it is time world powers realised that the right-wing agenda in India is quickly paving the way to further military conflict with not only Pakistan but China. Both neighbouring states have warned India that its Article 370 abrogation and ‘union territory’ annexation moves are not only illegal but constitute a direct challenge to their own longstanding territorial claims. The prospect of these three nuclear armed powers turning to full scale war to ‘resolve’ the crisis is both real and alarming. The World Sikh Parliament, pointing out that such a conflict would devastate the Sikh homeland in Punjab, had urged those powers and the UN just four months ago to take serious steps to escalate the issue on the international agenda; we reiterate that request now, as the only meaningful way to counter Indian aggression.

Link: https://www.wntv.uk/world-sikh-parliament-statement-on-the-kashmir/