PM Imran speaks of Kashmir atrocities as world remembers Srebrenica genocide

ISLAMABAD : Prime Minister Imran Khan Saturday while recounting his “shocked” and “appalled” memories of Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Bosnian Muslims 25 years ago, urged the world community to take notice and forestall the recurrence of such genocide in the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJK). In his video message on 25th memorial anniversary of the genocide that took place in Srebrenica today, he urged the world community to learn a lesson from that massacre and must never allow such things to happen again, referring to the problems in the IOJK where, he said, 800,000 Indian troops had besieged eight million Kashmiri people. “And we all fear that similar sort of massacre might follow there. The world community must take notice and never allow such acts to take place again,” the prime minister emphasized. “I never understood how such a thing was allowed by the world community. The world must never allow such things to happen again. Eight thousand Indian troops have besieged eight million in Indian-administered Kashmir. We can’t allow what happened in Bosnia to happen in Kashmir,” he added. The Srebrenica genocide was the worst atrocity crime on European soil since the Second World War, said UN Secretay General Antonio Guterres in a video message. “Twenty-five years later, we pay tribute to the thousands brutally murdered — and pledge to never forget them. And we reaffirm our solidarity with the survivors,” he remarked. A quarter-century ago, the United Nations and the international community failed the people of Srebrenica. As former Secretary-General Kofi Annan said, this failure will “haunt our history forever”. Confronting that past is a vital step towards rebuilding trust, he added.