Support the Kashmiri people!

 

Andy Brooks, Mushtaq Lasharie and Theo Russell at the meeting

by New Worker correspondent

Members of London’s Pakistani community joined New Worker supporters to call for justice for the Kashmiri people at a meeting in central London last week. They had come to the Cock Tavern in Euston to hear NCP leader Andy Brooks and Mushtaq Lasharie, who chairs the Third World Solidarity movement, demand the immediate and unconditional end to martial law in Indian-held Kashmir and support the Kashmiri people’s call for self-determination.

Mushtaq Lasharie summarised the plight of the Kashmiris under Indian occupation despite UN calls going back to 1947 that upheld their right to self-determination. This was supported by Andy Brooks, who talked about the pressing need to draw the broader labour movement behind the legitimate demands of the Kashmiri people whose cause is still largely only upheld by the British Pakistani and British Muslim population.

The meeting endorsed a motion that called on India to immediately and unconditionally restore the special status accorded to Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian constitution , release all the Kashmiri political prisoners and allow journalists, diplomats and human rights activists to enter and work unhindered in Indian-administered Kashmir

The motion noted that Pakistan and India are both nuclear powers, and another full-scale war could easily escalate into a nuclear exchange that would leave millions dead. It supported all efforts to ensure that this does not happen. The key demand is the end of partition and it upheld the original 1947 UN resolution and supported the just demand for a referendum to let the Kashmiri people decide if they want to be part of India, Pakistan, or in an independent state of Kashmir.

The motion has now been sent to all those who took part in the meeting for further amendments and it will later be sent round for endorsement in the broader labour and peace movement.