India's appeasement a replay of Munich Agreement: AJK President.

MIRPUR [AJK] -- Azad Jammu Kashmir President Sardar Masood Khan Thursday said that India's appeasement by major powers, in the aftermath of the invasion, siege and colonization of the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir on August 5 this year, was reminiscent of the 1938 Munich Agreement when Western powers acquiesced to Hitler's land grab in Czechoslovakia and later of Poland.

'At that time they endorsed Hitler's claim that this was an internal matter', Masood said while speaking at the Centre of Excellence (Faizan-i-Islam) in Waltham Forest Area of London, said an official message released to the media by AJK Presidential Secretariat.

This appeasement, he said, led to a devastating war, genocide and pogrom and added that the situation in IOJK was not much different.

The reception was hosted by Sheikh Ghulam Rabbani and attended by local MPs, Councilors, lawyers and representatives of civil society.

President Masood Khan said that the people of London cannot fully visualise the pain and suffering the people of IOJK, where the entire population was besieged in their own homes and homeland, where thousands of youth had been abducted by the occupation forces and were being tortured in prison houses, where entire political leadership was behind bars, where women were being molested and raped, and where the entire territory had become an economic wasteland.

The president said that what kind of mockery was it that the puppet Governor of the occupied territory and his masters sitting in Delhi were saying that the situation in IOJK was 'normal'. It was a jailer's definition of normal situation with the difference that in this mass prison, innocent, unarmed people were being incarcerated and brutalised as a nation.

'This was India's new normal'. Let the people of Kashmir say the situation is normal, and they would say that only when their fundamental rights, including the right to self-determination, have been restored.

Sardar Masood Khan thanked the UK Parliament for holding a debate on Jammu and Kashmir after the illegal steps taken by India on August 5; and the Labour Party for adopting a strong resolution on Kashmir. In this regard, he especially acknowledged and applauded the role of the Kashmiri and Pakistani diaspora community in the UK which had influenced public opinion inside and outside the Parliament through effective lobbying, vigils, rallies, processions, demonstrations, and conferences.

'Your voice had an impact and it will continue to...