In response to two pieces of disturbing news — a plot to assassinate renowned Kashmir Pandit activist Sushil Pandit that was foiled and the tragic killing of 22-year old Hindu businessman Aakash Mehra by terrorists in Srinagar, Kashmir — HAF Managing Director Samir Kalra offered the following statement:
“The latest attacks, and attempted attacks, on members of the Hindu minority population in the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and those that speak out on behalf of them, clearly illustrate two things: first, that the threat to members of the Kashmiri Hindu Pandit community remains real and ever-present; and, second, the motivations of these terrorists is overwhelmingly to finish the ethnic-religious cleansing of the Valley of Kashmir, begun in the 1990s. As we’ve consistently pointed out, rather than being about any notion of creating a secular, inclusive and tolerant democracy, the terrorist violence in Kashmir is about the creation of a theocratic Islamic state in the region, where religious minorities and women would effectively be second-class citizens.”
Sushil Pandit was a guest at the Hindu American Foundation’s Annual Advocacy Forum in 2017 where he spoke on a panel discussing terrorism in South Asia .
