KPs criticise linking their return to Valley with money, jobs

Ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Jammu and Kashmir, Kashmiri Pandits today said their return and rehabilitation to the Valley cannot be addressed without recognising the fact that they were subjected to "religious cleansing and genocide" which eventually lead to their displacement.
They criticised the move to link the return of the exiled community to the Valley with only money, jobs and land.
"It is even bigger reason for alarm. This is a renewed attempt to sell the same non-solutions that the old Congress governments have been attempting in the past," Roots in Kashmir, the frontline organisation of the exiled Kashmiri Pandits, said in a release here.

"Such attempts tend to reduce our exodus from the Valley to some kind of a natural calamity like famine, flood or earthquake," it said after a 'Round Table Conference' in Delhi, where the leading Kashmiri Pandit organisations and individual activists were invited.
According to a unanimous resolution passed by the participants representing the community, "Addressing the issue of return and rehabilitation of Kashmiri Hindus in any other concocted context only compounds the problem and is tantamount to denial of genocide."
It said the government should recognise the problem of "uprootment of Kashmiri Hindus as genocide and invoke the covenants of prevention of genocide."

The Pandits also demanded creation of a tribunal on the pattern of Nuremberg trials "to bring the perpetrators of genocide of Kashmiri Hindus to justice."

They demanded that Kashmiri Hindus be rehabilitated at one centrally administered territory in Kashmir valley.
"A sustainable and permanent return of Kashmiri Hindus will be possible only in such a dispensation," the resolution said.
It was resolved that accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India is final and irrevocable.
The round Table was attended by Agnishekar, Convenor Panun Kashmir and Ajay Chungroo, Chairman Panun Kashmir, Rakesh Razdan, Vice President, Kashmiri Samiti Delhi, Amit Raina, Coordinator, APMCC, Kundan Kashmiri, President, Kashmiri Pandit Conference, Veerji Wangoo, President, Youth for Panun Kashmir, Sh. Sunil Shakdar, Chairman S K Foundation and Pavitra Handoo, Former President Kashmir Overseas Association.

Ashish Zutshi, Roots in Kashmir, R K Mattoo, Former Editor, The New Indian Express, S S Toshkhani, well known Poet, Linguist, writer and scholar, and P L Razdan and Ashok Zalpuri, a known community activist also attended the conference.