UNITED NATIONS, : Pakistan has rejected India’s “false narrative” to equate the Kashmiris’ struggle for the right of self-determination with terrorism, saying the indigenous resistance in occupied Kashmir stemmed from the denial of that “inalienable right” to the oppressed people.
“Since the Indian colonization of Jammu & Kashmir in 1947, New Delhi has tried different tactics to sustain its illegal occupation, ” Pakistani delegate Bilal Mahmood Chaudhary told the General Assembly’s Special Political and Decolonization (Fourth) Committee.
He was reacting to a statement by an Indian representative who claimed that Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part of India and that the principle of self-determination was no justification for undermining a member state’s territorial integrity.
Exercising his right of reply, Chaudhary, a counsellor at the Pakistan Mission to the UN, pointed out that there was “massive resistance” to India’s rule in the Indian occupied Kashmir.
The Kashmiri people remained resolute in their claim for the UN-pledged right of self-determination, despite being subjected to massacre, rape, torture, mass blinding and forced disappearances, the Pakistani delegate said.
Referring to India’s attempt to alter the demographics in the colonized territory, he said that India now aims to snatch the cultural identity and land of the indigenous people of Jammu and Kashmir.
“But”, the Pakistani delegate said, ” India needs to understand that such deceptions are destined to fail. If at all, they will intensify the yearnings of the people of Jammu and Kashmir for the right to self-determination.
“Fearful of strong local reaction, India continues to impose inhumane military and digital siege, shutting out Kashmir from rest of the world.”
Nevertheless, he said, Pakistan will keep exposing Indian brutality and inform international community of Kashmiris’ plight.
India must release all political prisoners in occupied Jammu & Kashmir; end human and communication blockade; rescind domicile law that allows non-Kashmiris to settle in disputed territory; stop human rights abuses; and end terrorism in Pakistan. Jammu & Kashmir was not part of India; it never was.
The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples gives all peoples the right to self-determination and that the subjection of peoples to alien subjugation was contrary to the UN Charter, Chaudhary said.
Against this backdrop, he said the continued suppression of the Kashmiri people of Jammu and Kashmir was most relevant to discussions in the Committee. The UN’s decolonization agenda will remain incomplete without the just resolution of the Kashmir dispute.
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