PM Khan Urges Pakistanis at Home and Abroad to Take to Streets on Kashmir Day

Fear in Kashmir as top Indian general talks of ‘deradicalization’ camps

DESPARDES — Prime Minister Imran Khan has called upon Pakistanis at home and abroad (over 10m Pakistanis are overseas) to take to the streets on February 5, Kashmir Day, in support of the people of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK), who have been living under a complete lockdown since August 5 when New Delhi revoked the valley’s semi-autonomous status.

Khan made the appeal a day after Foreign Minster Shah Mehmood Qureshi announced a 10-day vigorous campaign to effectively highlight the Kashmir cause.

“I want Pakistanis at home and abroad to come out on 5th Feb in support of the 8 million Kashmiris who have been besieged by 900k Indian soldiers for almost 6 months by the fascist racist Modi regime,” Khan tweeted on Friday.

PM Khan will also address the AJK legislative assembly, as well as a public gathering in Muzaffarabad on Kashmir Day.

Qureshi said Islamabad-based diplomatic corps will be invited at the President House on February 4 to apprise them on the situation in Kashmir. It’s the 173rd day of lockdown in the occupied valley.

Fear in Kashmir as top general talks of ‘deradicalization’ camps

India’s newly recruited Chief of Defense Staff General Bipin Rawat has courted controversy after he claimed that so-called “deradicalization” camps are operating in India.

“There are people who have completely been radicalized. These people need to be taken out separately, possibly taken into some deradicalization camps. We have deradicalization camps going on in our country,” Rawat said addressing the media and foreign delegates in New Delhi last week.

Confirming Rawat’s claims, a senior police official in Kashmir told international media that the first “deradicalization” center in Kashmir is on the cards.

“The Jammu and Kashmir police department has conceptualized one de-radicalization center for which funds have been granted by the Ministry of Home Affairs but it is yet to be established,” the official, who wished to remain anonymous, told media without elaborating on the “deradicalization center”.