KARACHI: Thousands of people rallied in this seaside metropolis in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province on Sunday to protest India’s decision to revoke the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir and urge the administration in Islamabad to help the “oppressed Muslims” in the disputed Himalayan territory.
“If Indian troops are deployed in Occupied Kashmir, then Pakistani forces should also be present there,” Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) Chief Siraj-ul-Haq said while addressing the Kashmir March organized by his party’s Karachi chapter.
“Our army is the best in the world,” he added. “Today, the whole nation is asking the army chief for the roadmap of Kashmir’s independence.”
The JI chief also called for scrapping the Simla agreement that was signed between Pakistan and India in July 1972. Apart from that, he asked the government to remove the 450-kilometer-long fence along the Line of Control (LoC) – or the de facto border dividing the two parts of Kashmir – and give representation to Muslim leaders of Indian-administered Kashmir in the legislative assembly of Azad Kashmir.
Haq noted that the nation wanted the government to take “concrete steps,” adding that people should march toward Islamabad if the top government representatives were reluctant to go beyond political rhetoric and take necessary measures to address the situation.
The JI chief also said that Pakistan should reject United States President Donald Trump’s mediation offer to help resolve the Kashmir dispute.
The rally was also addressed by Pakistan Peoples Party leader and former Senate chairman, Raza Rabbani, who endorsed JI’s stance over the issue and said that American mediation could prove detrimental to Pakistan’s Kashmir cause.
“The US mediated in Palestine and it gave Palestinian lands to Israel,” he said.
