HR bodies concerned over future of 107,780 children orphaned in IOK.

LAHORE -- Renowned politician and human rights' activist Nelson Mandela said: 'The children must play in the open veld, no longer tortured by the pangs of hunger and not be engaged in deeds whose gravity exceeds the demands of their tender years.'

Various world Human Rights (HR) bodies across the globe had exposed from time to time, in their findings that military forces in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) were using torture as Instrument of Control (IoC) to quash the Kashmiri Movement of Independence, and killing thousands of Kashmiris turning a large child population as orphaned.

President, Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) Sardar Masood Khan, in his recent statement on the occasion of the International Day of Innocent Children 'Victims of Aggression', had regretted that the IOK children who were supposed to get education and joys of childhood life with their parents, brothers, sisters, were being killed, put behind the bars or deprived of their parents.

He said innocent children of Occupied Kashmir were the most vulnerable of the barbarity and aggression of Indian occupation forces.

These children, since their birth, had witnessed nothing except the sounds of Indian guns, miseries, cries of the injured and smelling smoke rising from the arms and ammunition. He said Hundreds of Kashmiri children have been killed by the Indian army during the last three decades while thousands of others have lost their parents, and many have passed their childhood in the Indian detention cells without any fault,' AJK president said.

According to the report had revealed that 894 children were among the 95,469 civilians who were martyred by Indian troops from January 1, 1989 till date.

Killing of civilians by the troops rendered 107,780 children orphaned in the territory during the period, the report said. Meanwhile, the report further said thousands of people including young school boys and girls were also injured by the pellets fired by Indian troops.

A large number of these orphan children either had lost their eyesight totally or became handicapped due to pellet injuries and other torture means. Child Protection and Welfare Bureau (CP and WB) sources told reporter that the bureau had written a letter to United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) to highlight Indian atrocities on children and minors in Indian occupied Kashmir (IOK).

Meanwhile, according to another report issued by the HR organisation, Save the Children 'Stop the war on...