Pakistan awaits global condemnation of India’s human rights violations in occupied Kashmir

NEW YORK   -  Pakistan has urged the world to implement the UN Security Council resolutions promising right of self-determination to people of Kashmir.

Speaking at a UN panel here yesterday, Ambassador Munir Akram denounced India’s state terrorism unleashed in Jammu and Kashmir. He said Pakistan called for the implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions prescribing a plebiscite enabling Kashmiri people to exercise their right to self-determination.

“India has denied the right of self-determination to the people of Jammu and Kashmir for the last seven decades,” Ambassador Akram told the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which deals with social, humanitarian and cultural issues. In his remarks, the Pakistani envoy also sought the world community’s role to ask India halts its human rights violations in occupied territory and allows an international inquiry commission to probe those abuses.

Speaking in the committee’s general debate, he said that Pakistan awaits global condemnation of India’s human rights violations in occupied Kashmir.

On 05 August 2019, India, the Pakistani envoy said, initiated its so-called ‘final solution’ in occupied Jammu and Kashmir by eliminating its statehood, imposing a siege and changing its demographic composition, flagrantly violating the UN Charter, the relevant Security Council resolutions and international law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Since then, he said, India imprisoned the entire Kashmiri political leadership, illegally detained 13,000 Kashmiri youth, tortured many of them, extra-judicially killed hundreds of young Kashmiri boys, used rape as a weapon of war, put down peaceful protests violently, blinding even young children with pellet guns, imposed collective punishments, by demolishing and burning entire neighborhoods and villages; and curtailed the freedom of religion and expression.

“This reign of terror, this state terrorism unleashed on innocent Kashmiris by India’s occupation forces, violate international human rights and humanitarian laws and constitute atrocity crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide,” Ambassador Munir Akram told the delegates from around the world.

“Due to officially proscribed impunity, not a single Indian soldier has been punished for these crimes,” he added. Some 4.2 million Indian settlers have been issued domicile certificates to transform the Indian Illegally Occupied Kashmir (IIOJK) to form a Muslim majority state into a Hindu majority territory, the Pakistani envoy said.

Dealing with racism, he said, expressions of racial hatred, religious supremacy and violent nationalism had escalated in several parts of the world. “Islamophobia is a pernicious manifestation of racism and hate which we must collectively combat,” Ambassador Akram said, noting that the Declaration on the 20th Anniversary Durban Conference has recognized Islamophobia as a contemporary form of racism, and also by the UN Global Counter Terrorism Strategy.

He said Prime Minister Imran Khan has proposed that the UN Secretary-General convene a global dialogue on countering the rise of Islamophobia. The Pakistani envoy also drew attention to the OIC’s call to designate an international day to combat Islamophobia.