The leaders announced that while they will hold the demonstration in India, their aligned group, Sikh Youth of America, will protest outside UN headquarters in the US.Radical Sikh organisations from Punjab, in collaboration with the political outfits of Tamil Nadu and Kashmir, will hold a ‘Justice March and Rally’ in Delhi on September 26, to protest against the abrogation of the Article 370. The march and rally will be organised on the eve of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address to the UN General Assembly, scheduled for September 27.
It will be jointly organised at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar by the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) and the Dal Khalsa, with the participation of the representatives of the United Akali Dal, leaders and activists of political party Naam Tamilar Katchi from Tamil Nadu and Committee for Release of Political Prisoners from Delhi.
Addressing a press conference on Sunday, leaders of all the parties declared that the minorities and nationalities will protest to uphold the Kashmiris’ right to speak.
“While the Prime Minister of India will present his side of story on Kashmir’s so-called integration into India at the United Nations session, we will speak on behalf of the population, who have been detained at gunpoint and their lives paralysed, since August 5,” the congregation said.
The leaders announced that while they will hold the demonstration in India, their aligned group, Sikh Youth of America, will protest outside UN headquarters in the US. They said that the Sikh, Tamil and Kashmiri diaspora in the US will protest against India’s highhandedness against the minorities and the lockdown in Kashmir.
SAD (Amritsar) president Simranjit Singh Mann said, with more than 40 days of continued incarceration of the entire population of the valley, concerned political groups, human rights bodies, civil liberties champions and those with affinity towards Kashmir and Kashmiris had decided to converge at Jantar Mantar, to express their solidarity with the people of Kashmir and protest against the continued subjugation by the Indian state.
Dal Khalsa head Harpal Singh Cheema said that the march will serve as a rallying point to declare that the problem of Kashmir and the rights of the Kashmiris was an international issue and not a bilateral one as India, the Security Council or the United Nations thinks it to be.
Meanwhile, the party’s spokesman Kanwar Pal Singh said, while they were comforted that the United Nations was raising its pitch of consternation against India on the overall situation in Kashmir, there was still room to do more.
UAD president Gurdeep Singh Bhatinda said the opposition parties, non-governmental groups, individual human rights defenders were reeling under stress.
