The “Million March” organized to highlight the Jammu and Kashmir issue got off to a disruptive start when Pakistan People’s Party leader Bilawal Bhutto had to be hurriedly taken off the dais at the Trafalgar Square on Sunday when hostile crowds booed and heckled him while sending a volley of projectiles including empty plastic bottles and cans at the dais.
Organised by Sultan Mahmood Choudhry, former prime minister of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, the march – billed as a show of strength for the cause of an independent Kashmir – quickly revealed the political fractures in Pakistan’s polity and the brittle relations between the PPP, former cricketer Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaaf, and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement.
Most of the protestors however were Kashmiris who had come from different parts of the United Kingdom, and their fury with Mr. Bhutto was because they saw the PPP as attempting to hijack the campaign to its political advantage.
“This is about the right of self determination of the Kashmiris, and should not be used by political parties for their own ends,” a participant who had come from the Midlands said.
Though billed as a million strong march, the crowd that gathered on a Sunday evening at London’s iconic protest side was estimated at around one thousand. Waving yellow and green flags of ‘Azad Kashmir’ and holding up placards denouncing India, the overwhelmingly male crowd marched the short distance to 10 Downing Street where the All Parties Hurriyat Conference submitted a memorandum in which it urged Britain to support the demand for self-determination for the Kashmiris, citing the examples of Scotland, East Timor and South Sudan.
In her recent visit to the UK, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had raised India’s concerns over the march and objected to Britain allowing groups that were hostile to India-UK relations to hold such demonstrations. Britain refused to ban the march stating its commitment to the freedom of speech. However it said that the Kashmir issue was for India and Pakistan to solve without the intervention of any other country including Britain.
