KL NEWS NETWORK
SRINAGAR
Noted Human Rights defender, Khurram Parvez, was shifted and lodged in Kupwara Jail during the intervening night of Friday and Saturday.
After being barred from flying to Geneva to attend 33rd session of UNHRC, Khurram was arrested from his Srinagar home late Thursday night. He was detained in Police Station Kothi Bagh before being shifted to Kupwara on ten days police remand.
Meanwhile, Parveena Ahangar led Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP) Saturday strongly condemned the “unlawful” detention and arrest of Human Rights defender Khurram Parvez.
In a statement issued, Ahangar, Chairperson of the APDP said, “this illustrates the strident and manipulative Indian state policy by which they continue to deny our truth and impose their lies. Not only do they commit atrocities but they also want to hide them from the International community.”
She said, “we demand that Khurram Parvez be immediately released. We also demand that the people of Kashmir should be allowed to protest and express their demands for justice and self-determination without fear of reprisal or intimidation. Thousands of political prisoners who are being harassed and have been slapped with the draconian PSA are released and the draconian PSA be withdrawn.”
She expressed her deep anguish at the current spate of violence and brutality unleashed on the people of Kashmir.
“We at APDP understand the pain and grief of the affected families their loss is irreparable,” she said.
“APDP salutes the people of Kashmir who are showing immense courage and resilience as they continue their valiant resistance against the gigantic State machinery. The entire population is under siege. We are being intimated and harassed as curfew is being enforced and all communication channels blocked. Hospitals are attacked and ambulance drivers beaten. Our journalists and photographers are being attacked. Armed forces are forcibly entering our homes, humiliating us, beating us brutally and targeting our assets. On the most auspicious occasion of Eid-al-Azha, we were forced to stay indoors and could not even participate in congregational prayers,” the APDP statement said.
The statement said that APDP fervently appeals to the International and the Indian Civil Society and Human rights community to respond to “this brutality, which has been continuing for decades now and put pressure on the Indian State to allow the ONHCR fact-finding mission to visit Kashmir and assess the current situation”.
“As we continue to face state repression and the impossibility of justice; it becomes imperative that an international mechanism be set up to investigate human rights violations which include enforced disappearances, extra judicial killings, firing on unarmed protestors, torture, sexual violence, and unknown and mass graves,” the statement added.
