Yana Mir, a social activist and a journalist from Jammu and Kashmir, was honoured in the UK Parliament with the Diversity Ambassador award. Ms Mir’s speech countering “propaganda” against Jammu and Kashmir is going viral, where she said she is “not a Malala Yousafzai”, the Nobel Peace Prize winner from Pakistan who has taken refuge in the UK.
At an event hosted by the Jammu and Kashmir Study Centre, UK, Ms Mir said, “I’m not a Malala Yousafzai…because I’m safe and free in my homeland Kashmir, which is part of India. I will never run away from my homeland and seek refuge in your country (UK). I can never be a Malala Yousafzai.”
Ms Mir then slammed the Nobel laureate for “defaming” India by calling Kashmir “oppressed” and said “I object to all such toolkit members from social media and foreign media who never cared to visit Kashmir in India but fabricate stories of oppression…I urge you to stop polarizing Indians on the grounds of religion. We won’t allow you to break us.”
She concluded her speech with a request and said, “Stop coming after us and let my Kashmir community live in peace.”
The video has over a million views on X (formerly Twitter). Yana Mir in her reply to the video said, “The Malala theory was given to her by her sister”.
Ms Mir received the Diversity Ambassador Award from UK MP Theresa Villiers in the presence of Bob Blackman and Virendra Sharma, both MPs in the Parliament. Virendra Sharma is a British-Indian MP from the opposition Labour MP from Ealing Southhall near London.
The Jammu and Kashmir Study Centre (JKSC), UK, hosted ‘India’s Sankalp Divas’ at the House of Commons in the Parliament in London. JKSC is a think tank that is dedicated to studying Jammu and Kashmir and the issues surrounding it.
Ms Mir, in her speech, said on ‘Sankalp Divas’ she hopes, “The perpetrators living in the UK and Pakistan would stop maligning my country in international media and human rights forums, stop unwanted selective outrage remotely from their cosy UK homes…Stop coming after us…thousands of Kashmiri mothers have lost their sons because of the dark hole of terrorism.”
