ISLAMABAD - Speaker National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq yesterday said that the Kashmir issue is not only a threat to peace and prosperity of South Asia but also to the entire world.
“Peaceful settlement of Kashmir issue in accordance with the aspirations of Kashmiri people is imperative for the peace and development of the region,” Ayaz said while addressing the 135th General Assembly of the Inter Parliamentary Union Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland.
According to a message received here from Geneva, the speaker said that gross violations of human rights are occurring in every part of the world.
“Ominously, situations of human rights violations are spiralling into outright conflict within and between countries”, he added. He said that this is the responsibility of parliamentarians around the world to ensure that the cycle of human rights violations and conflicts is broken.
Sardar Ayaz Sadiq urged that they need to ensure delivery of the fundamental rights of people, as enshrined in every democratic country’s constitution. If parliaments fail in this primary task then outright violations of rights are inevitable and conflicts become unavoidable, he said.
He said that the Parliament of Pakistan is actively engaged in further strengthening the human rights of women in Pakistan.
The creation of an independent National Commission on the Status of Women and a National Commission on Human Rights through Acts of Parliament are major achievements in Pakistan, the Speaker said.
He informed that over the past ten years, the parliament has enacted around two dozen Bills, to safeguard the rights of women and children. He further said that the presence of all-parties Women’s Parliamentary Caucus, consisting of 87 women parliamentarians, has ensured a balanced gender perspective in the legislative work of the parliament.
Sardar Ayaz Sadiq said that Pakistan has ratified seven core international human rights treaties at the international level. “We are also fully engaged in various human rights fora in developing, monitoring and implementing international human rights norms. This reflects Pakistan’s commitment to international human rights standards” he said.
He lamented that India has employed brutal practices in the occupied valley including unprovoked firing with shotgun pellets, attacking ambulances, hospitals and funerals, clamping curfews, blacking out media, detaining Hurriyat leadership, closing down offices of Amnesty International and other International Human Rights Organizations and refusing to allow UNHCR’s fact finding mission in Indian Occupied Kashmir to gag the Kashmiri freedom movement.
Sardar Ayaz Sadiq reiterated that Pakistan never has backed away from supporting peaceful resolution of Kashmir issue under the auspices of the UN Charter. He said that all Parliamentary parties are united in their support for the Kashmir cause, as being strongly reiterated in the ongoing Joint Sitting of the Parliament.
He informed that both houses of the Parliament have passed more than half a dozen resolutions to strongly denounce the reprehensible acts of unprecedented state terrorism by Indian forces in the occupied Valley.
While concluding, he urged the international community to take notice of the deteriorating situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir and seek condemnation of the Indian brutalities at the highest level.