ISLAMABAD – Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi says India’s draconianmeasures in Kashmir are inching the situation towards the unthinkable.
In an op-ed in CNN Online, Shah Mahmood Qureshi wrote that the unilateralmove of India on August 5 abrogated the special autonomous status grantedto Jammu and Kashmir within its constitution. What has followed hasreminded the world of the extremism and xenophobia that still plagues it.He wrote it has forced everyone from international media to human rightsorganizations and legislators in the Western world to call the right-wingBharatiya Janata Party-led Indian government out on its actions.
Qureshi added that the people of Kashmir have been under total lockdown andhave seen shortages of food and medicine. Thousands have been detainedthrough mass arrests.
Using the familiar tactics of night raids, alleged torture, a mediablackout and the suppression of protests, the Indian government has beentrying desperately to conceal the dire humanitarian and security situationon the ground.
Qureshi further said India’s government wants to gaslight the internationalcommunity into normalizing India’s de facto annexation of theMuslim-majority state, and its ethno-nationalist saber-rattling in a regionwith major US interests and international stability at stake. But, theworld must stand up for what is right.
He demanded the international community to expose the reality that the BJPgovernment is enacting a nefarious political agenda. In its plans to allowIndians to buy land in Kashmir, India’s government is putting Kashmir’sMuslim majority at risk-a policy that could change Kashmir’s identity. InPakistan’s opinion, he said, this violates the Fourth Geneva Convention,which prohibits a country from transporting its own people into occupiedterritory.
Foreign Minister said as the country that has always committed itself tospeaking up for the people of Kashmir, Pakistan cannot be silent on theunfolding catastrophe in Kashmir.
He said we requested the implementation of several UNHCHR recommendations,including the establishment of a UN Commission of Inquiry to investigatehuman rights violations and regular reporting by the UN High Commissionerfor Human Rights on Jammu and Kashmir.
Most of all, we have called for a peaceful solution to the dispute throughthe implementation of the UN Security Council resolutions that put thewishes of the Kashmiri people first.
We must not be naïve about what is happening in Kashmir, and India must bestopped before this goes any further.