The All Parties Hurriyat Conference expressing serious concern over scores of massacres including the 1993 Sopore massacre committed by Indian troops in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir in the last over three decades has said that the deteriorating situation in the territory warrants an international initiative. According to Kashmir Media Service, Indian troops of Border Security Force (BSF) had martyred over 60 innocent Kashmiris and torched over 400 shops and residential houses by setting the Sopore town ablaze on this day in 1993. The APHC leaders and organizations including Professor Abdul Ghani Butt, Ghulam Muhammad Khan Sopori, Advocate Arshad Iqbal, Maulana Musaib Nadvi, Jammu and Kashmir Democratic Political Movement, Kashmir Freedom Front and Jammu and Kashmir Employees Movement in their statements issued in Srinagar said that brute Indian occupation forces set the apple town on fire, ruthlessly gunned down many innocent civilians, and destroyed the economic backbone of the occupied territory.

They termed the Kashmiris’ sacrifices as the priceless asset of the ongoing freedom struggle. They demanded an impartial international probe into the Sopor carnage and other such massacres to punish the involved Indian troops. The leaders and organizations said that hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris had lost their lives in their just struggle for securing freedom from India’s illegal occupation since 1947. The unresolved dispute has been the main reason of the enormous sufferings of the people of Kashmir, they said. They said that the settlement of the Kashmir dispute is a prerequisite for lasting peace in South Asia.

Credit: Independent News Pakistan (INP)