WASHINGTON, Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed Khan, has urged key US Congressmen to speak out against the “grave” human rights violations in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), and to call on India to peacefully resolve the long-standing Kashmir dispute with Pakistan through dialogue.
“It is laudable that the Biden administration has vowed to put freedom and human rights at the center of the US foreign policy agenda,” he said in a letter to members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee on the second anniversary of India’s annexation of the disputed territory of Kashmir.
“Kashmir is a test case for the United States’ commitment to upholding those values,” Ambassador Khan added.
“I would, therefore, once again urge you to take note of the grave human rights situation in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, and call upon India to cease all attempts to alter the disputed nature of the territory, and engage in dialogue with Pakistan for the peaceful resolution of this longstanding dispute.”
The Pakistani envoy said, “With 900,000 Indian military and paramilitary forces standing watch over 8 million people, Kashmir remains one of the most highly militarized zones in the world,” he wrote. “With such a large occupation force deployed against a defiant civilian population, there have predictably been grave human rights violations.”
Since August 5, 2019 lockdown in Kashmir, he said another 390 Kashmiris have been killed by Indian security forces. and in 2021 alone, some 85 Kashmiris murdered in extra-judicial killings.
“Indian security forces routinely stage fake encounters to kill young Kashmiri protestors, and use pellet guns against women and children,” he said in his letter released on Wednesday.
“As Pakistan had warned, the Indian government is proceeding with the enactment of illegal measures to effect demographic change in Kashmir. The displacement of the local population by non-residents in an internationally disputed territory contravenes, as you know, international law and, in particular, the Fourth Geneva Convention,” Ambassador Khan said, pointing out that the entire Kashmiri political leadership has rejected these moves to create ‘settler colonies’.”
Highlighting that India’s repression and human rights abuses in Kashmir have drawn widespread international outrage, the Pakistani envoy said that the UN Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, among other international human rights organizations, have expressed concern about Indian atrocities in Kashmir.
The United States Congress, he said, had also taken note of India’s actions in Kashmir, with special hearings in the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in 2019.
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