Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has claimed that the Indian government issued over 1.8 million bogus domicile certificates to non-Kashmiris as part of New Delhi's plan to change the demographic structure of the occupied territory.

Speaking at an event organized by the Islamabad-based think-tank Institute of Regional Studies on Wednesday, Qureshi said the Indian design in the occupied territory is a direct violation of the resolutions of the UN Security Council and international law, including the 4th Geneva Convention.

"In its march towards this illegal and inhuman end, the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] government has already issued over 1.8 million bogus domicile certificates to non-Kashmiris to settle them in the IIOJK [Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir] to undermine the plebiscite in accordance with the UNSC resolutions," Qureshi said.

A domicile certificate is a form of right of citizenship, entitling a person to residency and government employment in the region, which was reserved until Aug 5, 2019, for the local population.

When India revoked the semi-autonomous status of the region on Aug 5, 2019, the local special citizenship law, guaranteed under Article 35A of the Indian Constitution was also scrapped.

The law prohibited outsiders from settling and claiming government jobs, including Indian nationals, to maintain the demographic balance.

"We [Pakistan] will not let anyone take away Kashmir from the Kashmiris. This cause and the struggle is just, sacred and non-negotiable," the foreign minister said.

Praising the struggle of the Kashmiri people, Qureshi said the Kashmiris have made it crystal clear with their supreme sacrifices that Jammu and Kashmir are not India's so-called "integral part."

"It never was… It never will be!" he added.

Qureshi urged the international community to act and stop human rights violations in Kashmir.

"Over 300 innocent Kashmiris have been martyred by the Indian occupation forces since Aug. 5, 2019. The extra-judicial killings of young Kashmiris in fake 'encounters' and staged cordon-and-search operations have become a regular occurrence in the IIOJK." he said.

Over 900,000 occupation troops have perpetuated the worst reign of terror against the innocent Kashmiris, he added.

Meanwhile, Senator Sirajul Haq, the head of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Pakistan's main religious-political party warned that Kashmir is the most important issue in the world between the two nuclear powers and that if it is not resolved according to the aspirations of millions of Kashmiris, peace in the region will be in grave danger.

Addressing a conference on Kashmir in the capital Islamabad, Haq demanded of Prime Minister Imran Khan to appoint a permanent deputy foreign minister whose duties are limited to Kashmir only.

The JI began observing the "Kashmir Day" in 1990, and since then Pakistan and Kashmiris around the world have been observing the 5th of February as the “Solidarity Day” with the pro-independence movement in Jammu and Kashmir by staging rallies and organizing seminars and conferences.

 Kashmir dispute 

Kashmir, a Muslim-majority Himalayan region, is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full. A small sliver of Kashmir is also held by China.

Since they were partitioned in 1947, the two countries have fought three wars -- in 1948, 1965, and 1971 -- two of them over Kashmir.

Some Kashmiri groups in Jammu and Kashmir have been fighting against the Indian rule for independence, or unification with neighboring Pakistan.

According to several human rights organizations, thousands of people have reportedly been killed in the conflict in the region since 1989./aa

Very little is known about what happens inside China's Uighur reeducation camps—but international media recently got some horrifying insight.  

A new report of Muslim detainees being systematically raped and sexually abused in China’s detention camps has renewed calls for the international community to take action against mass human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

The accounts of violence, told to the BBC by three female former detainees and one former guard, paint a chilling picture of life inside the internment camps, where an estimated 1 million members of ethnic Uighur and other Muslim groups are being held against their will.

The British broadcaster said the former detainees and the guard “experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture.”

One detainee said that women were removed from their cells “every night” and raped by one or more masked Chinese men, adding that she was tortured and gang-raped on three occasions. The BBC said it was “impossible” to fully verify the account of the detainee, whom it said had fled Xinjiang to Kazakhstan and was now in the United States. The travel documents provided by the detainee corroborated her story’s timeline, BBC said.

Another detainee said she was forced to strip Uighur women naked, handcuff them to the bed so they could be raped by guards, then take them for a shower and clean the room where it happened. A third detainee said some women were tortured by guards who raped them with an electrified stick. VICE World News could not independently verify the allegations.

Uighur advocacy groups say that such horrific details constitute further evidence of the severe abuse and mistreatment of Uighurs by Chinese authorities.

“Chinese policemen and camp staff and their methods of conducting sexual abuse and torture towards Uighur women are the same and consistent,” Nurgul Sawut, from the group Campaign for Uyghurs, told the ABC. “Their common methods are: gang rape, attacks on Uyghur women’s dignity and selling Uyghur women as sex slaves.”

The U.S. government on Wednesday said it was “deeply disturbed” by the reports of sexual abuse and repeated the U.S. charges that Beijing’s actions in Xinjiang amounted to “crimes against humanity and genocide,” Reuters reported. A State Department spokeswoman said China should immediately allow independent investigations into the rape allegations and other atrocities in Xinjiang, according to Reuters.

China’s state-sanctioned oppression of Uighurs has taken place in the far-western region since at least 2014, when the Communist Party of China launched what it called the “Strike Hard Campaign Against Violent Terrorism”: an attempt by the government, following several terror attacks from Uighur separatists, to combat religious extremism by punishing Uighurs.

Chinese authorities have used so-called “reeducation camps” to indoctrinate Uighurs and other Muslims since at least 2017, according to Human Rights Watch, detaining them for the stated purpose of promoting social integration.

China was also found to use advanced technology to conduct predictive policing of the mostly Muslim minorities, selecting them for detention based on seemingly innocuous behaviour.

A former guard at the camps told the BBC that detainees were punished for seemingly minor infractions, such as failing to accurately memorise passages from books about Xi Jinping, by having food withheld or being beaten.

"Once we were taking the people arrested into the concentration camp, and I saw everyone being forced to memorise those books. They sit for hours trying to memorise the text, everyone had a book in their hands," said the guard. "I entered those camps. I took detainees into those camps. I saw those sick, miserable people.

“They definitely experienced various types of torture. I am sure about that."/ vice

UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday he would do everything in his power to pressure Myanmar and ‘make sure that this coup fails.’

Myanmar plunged back into direct military rule on Monday when soldiers detained de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian leaders in a series of dawn raids, ending the country’s brief experiment with democracy.

‘We will do everything we can to mobilize all the key actors and international community to put enough pressure on Myanmar to make sure that this coup fails,’ Guterres said in a conversation with The Washington Post.

‘After elections that I believe took place normally and after a large period of transition, it’s absolutely unacceptable to reverse the results of the elections and the will of the people.’

When asked about the indictment of Suu Kyi, 75, Guterres said that ‘if we can accuse her of something, it is that she was too close to the military, is that she protected too much the military.

‘I hope that democracy will be able to make progress again in Myanmar but for that all the prisoners must be released, the constitutional order must be reestablished,’ he added.

The UN chief also lamented that the security council has been unable to agree on a common statement about Myanmar’s coup, after an emergency meeting initiated by Britain.

According to a draft text proposed at the beginning of the week for negotiation and obtained by AFP, the security council would express its deep concern over and condemn the coup, and would demand the military ‘immediately release those unlawfully detained.’

The council would also demand that the one-year state of emergency be repealed.

As of Wednesday evening, according to diplomats, negotiations were continuing between the 15 Council members, particularly with China and Russia, which on Tuesday blocked the statement’s adoption./NEW AGE

The Gambia, which lodged a lawsuit against Myanmar in 2019 seeking to prevent a genocide of the Rohingya minority, on Wednesday demanded that coup leaders there protect the group.

‘We are gravely concerned that the same military leadership that marginalised the Rohingya has now seized full control of the Myanmar government,’ the information ministry said in a statement.

‘We fear they may launch another so-called ‘clearance operation’ to rid the country of the approximately 600,000 Rohingya who survived the last round of human rights violence,’ said the statement, adding that Banjul was ‘monitoring events very closely’.

Since August 2017, around 740,000 Rohingya have sheltered in neighbouring Bangladesh, fleeing the ravages of the Myanmar military and Buddhist militias.

The exact number of Rohingya killed in the violence is unknown but humanitarian groups estimate the toll at several thousand.

The Gambia, a small English-speaking country in West Africa, had the support of the 57 members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation in lodging the suit against Myanmar before the International Court of Justice.

The suit accused Myanmar of violating the 1948 UN convention against genocide, a charge rejected by the head of the de facto government in Yangon, Aung San Suu Kyi — who was overthrown on Monday by the army.

In January 2020 the ICJ, rejecting arguments made personally by Suu Kyi in The Hague, imposed urgent interim measures on the predominantly Buddhist nation, ordering it to cease the commission of genocidal acts, prevent the destruction of evidence of crimes against the Rohingya and report back to the UN every six months.

It ordered Myanmar to protect the Rohingya still in the country from further exactions, pending a final ruling in the case, which could take years.

On Wednesday, the Gambian government wrote that the ICJ’s interim measures ‘are binding on Myanmar no matter who heads the government’ and demanded that the putschists ‘abide by the court’s orders and Myanmar’s international obligations.’/new age

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Wednesday he would rally the international community and key players to do everything possible to thwart the recent coup in Myanmar. 

Guterres said the coup d’état staged by the military that has swept up key political and civil society leaders since early Monday is "absolutely unacceptable."

"We will do everything we can to mobilize all the key actors and international community to put enough pressure on Myanmar to make sure that this coup fails," Guterres said during an interview with The Washington Post. "After a large period of transition, it is absolutely unacceptable to reverse the results of the election and the will of the people."

Vowing to hold the reins of power for a year, Myanmar's military declared a state of emergency on Monday, hours after detaining ousted President Win Myint and State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi and other senior members of the pre-coup ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

The coup took place hours before the first session of the country's new parliament was set to convene following elections last November in which Suu Kyi's NLD party made sweeping gains.

The military claimed the coup was staged due to "election fraud" in the polls, which it said resulted in the dominance of the NLD in parliament.

Guterres challenged the military's claims, saying he firmly believes the polls were conducted "normally,” adding if Suu Kyi can be accused of anything, it was being too close to the military.

"She protected too much the military, namely in relation to what has happened with the dramatic offensive of the military army against the Rohingyas," he said. "Aung San Suu Kyi assumed the defense of the military, even in international court, so if we can accuse her of something, it was being too close to the military. So it is absolutely unacceptable to see this coup."

Suu Kyi was charged earlier Wednesday with several counts under the country’s export-import law for possessing 20 illegally imported walkie-talkies, which were confiscated at her house during an early morning raid on Monday. She faces up to three years behind bars./aa