Think about it’s important to dwell beneath circumstances the place there is no such thing as a electrical energy for days and in an effort to hold your loved ones heat throughout the winter season you might be pressured to burn the picket furnishings that you just inherited as your wifes dowry. Think about there is no such thing as a operating water for months and also you and your ladies and kids should fetch water from the polluted river day in and day trip.

Think about you aren’t being paid your wage and the native store keeper refuses to provide you meals necessities on credit score except you clear the present debt. Think about you might have been given the sack with out prior discover and the college your youngsters go to refuses to allow them to sit within the class room resulting from ono-payment of tuition charges.

Think about you might be an outdated pensioner and the submit workplace refuses to pay your pension resulting from lack of funds. Think about you ship you daughter to a school to be educated and her personal professor kidnaps after which rapes her.

Think about scores of your feminine college students are forcefully despatched to go to Pakistan army private stationed on the Line of Management fulfill their lust for male gaze. Think about you’re a faculty trainer and it’s important to observe sit-ins at authorities workplaces and beg for a pay rise from those that you as soon as taught in your class room. And picture you might be unable to cost your cell phone since you dwell in a metropolis doesn’t have energy and electrical energy for 22 hours’ day.

That is what my persons are pressured to dwell like for the previous seven a long time.

In Pakistan occupied Jammu Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan (PoJK and PoGB) persons are affected by malnutrition, illness, psychological well being points, unemployment, drug abuse, sexual exploitation and harassment that leaves them with little selection however to finish their lives. From 2018 to 2022 at the least 219 suicides have been report in PoGB alone. Some 1.5 million younger and center aged males from PoJK out of a complete inhabitants of 4 million have been pressured emigrate to the Center Jap nations, Europe and North America to carry out underpaid and unskilled or low expert jobs for numerous corporations.

The roles my individuals carry out within the above point out components of the world embody fork lifting, driving taxis, working as cooks and kitchen porters, waiters, safety guards and as rest room cleaners at airports and purchasing malls. Our land is wealthy in pure assets together with minerals, treasured stones, forests and contemporary water rivers which if correctly managed might generate a mixed income of greater than $10 billion a 12 months.

This sum of money can simply pay at no cost schooling and electrical energy, hospitals, pensions in addition to in creating probably the most trendy industrial, and social infrastructure that might match any metropolis that belongs to todays superior capitalist world. The rationale my persons are poor is as a result of our lands have been beneath the unlawful occupation of the state and military of Pakistan.

On October 22, 1947 Pakistan military attacked our state of Jammu and Kashmir and commenced massacring non-Muslim non secular minorities within the identify of �purifying’ Jammu and Kashmir of infidels. This resulted within the worst type of genocide of the Hindu and Sikh communities because the Holocaust. Greater than 100,000 Hindus and Sikhs have been beheaded, shot or hacked to loss of life between 22 October 1947 and March 1948.

It was on October 26, 1947 that our king, Maharaja Hari Singh, signed an instrument of accession with the Republic of India opening means for Indian troops to land within the capital metropolis of Srinagar and push again the invaders. Nonetheless, a ceasefire brokered by the then United Nation Safety Council introduced the warfare to an abrupt halt leaving the unliberated territories of Jammu Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan within the arms of the Pakistan authorities.

To today my individuals await the time they might be liberated and let out from the unlawful occupation of Pakistan. In keeping with the instrument of Accession, signed between Maharaja Hari Singh and Lord Mount Batten, territories which can be beneath the occupation of Pakistan are additionally a part of that settlement thus making each territories (PoJK/GB) and integral a part of India.

Subsequently, myself and my persons are Indian residents by default. And above all Nerendra Modi can be our Prime Minister. Is it not time that our prime minister ought to unwaveringly elevate the problem of our subjugation and struggling with the world group and assist to set us free and rejoin our motherland?

(Author is an writer and a human rights activist from Mirpur in PoJK. He at the moment lives in exile within the UK)