Issues in POJK has been heating up due to various political and military statements by the Indian authorities as well as Pakistani authorities. The curious faculties of my mind started running to understand as to what does the people residing in Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir actually want for themselves. I scrolled through various articles, news extracts, and digital media across the Internet. To not much of a surprise I found out that people living in the regions of Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan are actually more than willing to join the Republic of India because of so much obvious reasons, but certainly there was one thing that caught my attention and it was about a recent event in the history of Jammu and Kashmir. It was for the first time in the history since the independence and of course after the proxy war initiated by Pakistan into the territory of India that a considerably huge mass of population came out of their houses to support the tricolour rally in Srinagar and to show their solidarity with the union of India; this doesn’t seem to be much of a surprise factor because the amount of development projects and work which has been done by the government of India in Jammu and Kashmir is humongous and it is but natural for the local population to come in the support of their country.
On the contrary, in the region of Kashmir which is administered by the Islamic Republic of Pakistan the Independence day of Pakistan on 14th of August was observed as the black day wherein most of the region of the POJK was covered in black flags, showing their resentment towards Pakistan and supporting their freedom movement being fought by the Kashmiris of the POJK, on the very next day that is on 15th August 2022 which happens to be the independence day of the Union of India, most of the cities of POJK hoisted the national flag of India to display their outrage against the Pakistan’s invasion of Kashmir in 1947 and a clear will to join into the Union of India as part of rest of the Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistani occupied Jammu and Kashmir is fighting the struggle for freedom and as citizens of India, it becomes our moral responsibility to support our brethren living in POJK in whatever way we can. With the present structure of command in the Central Government of India the hopes of the people of POJK have been revived and they see a bright future for their coming generations which would be free from the atrocities of Pakistan and form a part of the Union of India.
In the recent series of events which transpired in POJK a lot of people were forced to migrate from their motherland and shift into different places, they were not given proper shelters, homes to live and were treated as refugees in the rest of the Pakistan; the forced migration was done to facilitate the Mangala Dam project which happens to be beneficial for the Chinese project of CPEC and will reap no benefits to the people of POJK. Leave aside any developments happening in the region, the Pakistani Government is hellbent to suck money out of the poorest of Kashmiri and treat them like free assets; the government has imposed a fuel duty charge onto the people of Kashmir, who do not even use the fuel generated electricity; but they are forced to pay the price for the luxuries of people sitting in air-conditioned offices and homes in Pakistani Punjab, Islamabad and Karachi. Apart from forced migration there has been a deliberate attempt of the occupier regime of Pakistan to change the basic fabric of the demography of Kashmiri population, they are forced to speak in Urdu or Punjabi and a lot of subsidies is being given to the people coming in and settling down in Kashmir from other parts of Pakistan thus, making a Kashmiri a minority in his own land. In recent times the government of Pakistan has passed a bill which gives power to Pakistani army to forcibly occupy any piece of land they want without any consultation and also to control the inflow of tourists into the region. The atrocities have been so much so, that Kashmiri speaking population in POJK is now limited to mere 05%.
There are clear signals of atrocities and deliberate attempts to wipe out the Kashmiriyat from Kashmir which is being occupied by Pakistan, whereas if you compare it with the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir there is a huge difference which can be seen. Therefore, we must support people like Mr. Ayub Mirza, who is a vocalist for the freedom struggle of POJK, they have exceptional amount of courage to speak against the occupier regime in a peaceful manner and not picking up weapons and spreading terrorism for their struggle of independence. Some scholars relate the freedom struggle of POJK with the 1971 liberation of Bangladesh; which according to me is an absolute unjust comparison because erstwhile East Pakistan was legally the part of Pakistan, which was suffering from cruelty, partial policies and atrocities by the Pakistani army, whereas, POJK is not a legal territory of Pakistan but they have been the occupier regime in the region and have attempted to manipulate the innocent Kashmiris into the context of religion and false promises thereby making it an absolute different story. The Indian government is morally responsible to free its own territory from Pakistan and integrate the Kashmiris of POJK, and people of Gilgit-Baltistan into the Union of India; which becomes the reason for this aggressive stance of the government towards POJK.
Comentários