Resolution on Kashmir passed in STWC conference in London

London, October 31
In London, Stop the War Coalition (STWC), a United Kingdom group has passed a resolution on Kashmir in its general conference. The resolution, which was moved by Khaja Aslam,
a journalist from Indian occupied Kashmir, on behalf of Britain/south Asia solidarity forum (BSASF), condemned the recent killings of over 111 innocent and unarmed young men and teenagers in the occupied territory.
It maintained that Kashmir was not a dispute of land between India and Pakistan but was a core political issue concerning to the future of millions of oppressed Kashmiris who had been deprived of justice since the partition of Indian sub-content. “The issue of Kashmir is the issue of self-determination which was guaranteed under successive United Nations Security Council resolutions. The self-determination of peoples is a basic principle of the United Nations Charter, which has been reaffirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and applied countless times to the settlement of many international conflicts,” it added.
“Presence of 700,000 Indian military and paramilitary forces without any moral, political and legal code has made Jammu and Kashmir the heaviest concentration in human history,” it added. It pointed out that India had put in force draconian laws like the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and the Disturbed Areas Act in occupied Kashmir that gave Indian troops to act with impunity.
The STWC resolution said that the lingering dispute needed the immediate attention of the world powers. It emphasised that the time had come when the world powers especially the US President, Barack Obama, who is going to visit India next week, should play an effective role in helping to secure a permanent settlement to the dispute in accordance with the Kashmiris’ aspirations.
It is to mention here that the STWC was founded in October 2001, one month after the then US President, George W Bush announced the ‘war on terror’, and has since been dedicated to ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, bringing the troops home and forcing the British and US governments to change their disastrous foreign policies.
It is for the first time that SWTC has included the Kashmir dispute in its agenda. In the conference it was decided that in future there would be a full day discussion on the Kashmir issue to highlight it on international forum. (KMS)