Pakistan slams arrest of Islamic scholars in IIOJK

ISLAMABAD  –   Pakistan strongly con­demned yesterday the arbitrary arrests and il­legal detention of promi­nent Islamic scholars, in­cluding Maulana Abdul Rasheed Dawoodi, Mau­lana Mushtaq Ahmed Veeri and five members of Jamaat-e-Islami, in Indian Illegally Occu­pied Jammu and Kash­mir (IIOJK).

These deplorable ac­tions only days ahead of the UN General Assembly session manifest India’s growing intransigence, and utter disregard of human rights and fun­damental freedoms, said the foreign ministry in a statement. These arrests have marked a new low in the Indian occupation

forces’ blatant and contin­ued onslaught on the human rights of the innocent Kash­miris. The illegal detention of the Kashmiri Islamic schol­ars, while the true represen­tatives of the Kashmiri peo­ple are already under Indian custody under fictitious cas­es and on fallacious grounds, is yet another Indian attempt to rob the Kashmiri people of their distinct religious and cultural identity. The repre­hensible arrests of the Kash­miri Islamic scholars under the draconian Public Safety Act (PSA) that defies all inter­national humanitarian laws and permits preventive de­tention for as many as two years without the need of any trial, is a deplorable pre-emp­tive step by the Indian au­thorities planning to illegally occupy the religiously signifi­cant ‘Waqf Board’ properties