The appeal was made during the governing council meeting of World Kashmir Freedom Movement here last night with its leaders underscoring the need to resolve the issue that has been hanging fire for the past 63 years and has claimed countless lives of people of Kashmir.
Speaking to the media, Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, Executive Director, Kashmiri American Council and a member of WKFM governing body, explained the ground realities and said the overseas Kashmiris had been actively promoting the cause of Kashmir and met 28 delegations at the recent UN General Assembly session and visited 21 embassies in Washington.
He said in their meeting with the UN Secretary-General Ban ki-Moon they had suggested the name of South African human right activist Bishop Desmond Tutu as UN special envoy on Kashmir. Dr Fai said Bishop Tutu was a person of international understanding who played a key role in South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee that helped to heal the wounds in the post-apartheid period. He quoted a number of Indian writers who have written that India has lost the right to rule Kashmir in view of its increasing unpopularity among the Kashmir masses and gross violations of human rights.
'There are no two opinions among the people of Kashmir who want total freedom from the India occupation,' Dr Fai added.
He said India and Pakistan have held 106 rounds of talks yet failed to resolve the Kashmir issue and it now time to involve international mediation to seek its eventual resolution.
Dr Fai said the immediate necessity was the intervention of the international community to bring the violence in Kashmiri to a quick end and the initiation of a political dialogue between All Parties Hurriyet Conference (APHC) and the governments of India and Pakistan to set the stage for democratic and peaceful solution. Furthermore, he said that a petition carrying some five thousand signatures will be handed over to the White House next week calling on President Obama to highlight the Kashmir issue in his talks with the Indian leadership.
Ali Shahnaz Khan, a governing council member, who heads the Scandinavian chapter of WKFM, told the media that a parliamentary debate on Kashmir will take place in the Norwegian Parliament on November 15 where Norway's Foreign Minister will make a policy statement on the issue.