United Nations (TDI): Pakistan has drawn global attention to the grim issue of enforced disappearances in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), with its envoy to the United Nations describing the absence of missing persons as a “wound that never heals.”
Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN Ambassador Asim Iftikhar Ahmad said that the issue of missing persons is especially serious in conflict zones and occupied territories around the world from IIOJK to Palestine.
During a discussion in the 15-member UNSC on the implementation of its Resolution 2474, which addresses the issue of missing persons, he said, “They are fathers who never made back it home, mothers torn from their children, young boys taken in the dead of night, and daughters whose destinies remain shrouded in silence.” Their disappearances leaves behind an unhealing wound, trapping families in a relentless cycle of hope and despair, he added.
Asim Iftikhar further said that despite calls for probes and accountability, the plight of missing persons continues to exacerbate in IIOJK, pointing out that after New Delhi’s illegitimate and unilateral actions of 5 August 2019, thousands of young boys were kidnapped and many still missing.
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The recent terrorist incident in Pahalgam, IIOJK, was used as a pretext to round up over two thousand people with the view to further oppress Kashmiris’ struggling for their legitimate right to self-determination, he added.
Referring to the unmarked and unknown graves of thousands of Kahmiris that have surfaced in recent year, the ambassador said that from the probes conducted so far, it has been revealed that these victims are first abducted by Indian forces and then tortured to death or summarily executed.
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He stated that India remains in denial over the thousands of forcibly disappeared Kashmiris and continues to resist conducting forensic investigations into over 7,000 unmarked mass graves.
