Police officers stand guard at the main entrance of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad on January 18, 2024. Photo: File
THE UNITED NATIONS:
Pakistan has castigated India for abandoning its obligations under UN Security Council resolutions guaranteeing the right to self-determination of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, arguing that its colonial settlement project in the disputed territory also blatantly violated international law.
“Jammu and Kashmir is not and has never been an integral part of India,” Pakistani delegate Asif Khan told the UN General Assembly Committee on Special Political Affairs and Decolonization on Monday.
He was exercising his right of reply to the Indian delegate, NK Premachandran, for asserting that Kashmir was and “always will remain an integral and inalienable part of India”. Premachandran, who is an MP, also called Pakistan the “source of terror” and went on to comment on its internal affairs.
Asif Khan, Minister of Pakistan’s Mission to the UN, rejected the Indian allegations and called India “the world’s largest producer of disinformation.”
Kashmir, he said, is an internationally recognized disputed territory whose final status must be determined by a free and impartial plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations.
“Let me reiterate that the 1960 United Nations Declaration decrees that ‘all peoples’ subject to foreign subjugation have the right to self-determination,” he said, adding that this right is also enshrined in the United Nations Charter.
For a long time, India has tried to sell a false narrative, terming the just struggle of the people of Jammu and Kashmir as terrorism,” Asif Khan said.
India’s intransigence in denying the Kashmiri people their fundamental rights, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, mass incarcerations, sexual violence and population engineering are the real reasons for the ‘indigenous’ freedom movement.
Although it portrays itself as a victim, he says, the truth is that India is the leading sponsor of state terrorism in the region, with a dubious distinction when it comes to extraterritorial assassinations. “He financed and led terrorist groups such as the TTP, BLA and Majeed Brigade, whose attacks killed thousands of innocent civilians in Pakistan.”
The Pakistani delegate said India’s claim to be the world’s largest democracy was “hollow”.
“The ruling RSS-BJP ideology has institutionalized Islamophobia and transformed the persecution of minorities into state policy,” Asif Khan said.
