ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) Chairman Imran Khan strongly condemned the violence unleashed by the Indian army against the Kashmiri people in the Indian-held Kashmir.
He expressed grave concern over what he called “lukewarm response” of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government which had been limited to a briefing by the foreign secretary to the envoys of the P5 countries, (United Kingdom, United States, China, France and Russia).
In his statement issued from the PTI’s media office here on Thursday, Imran said that no ‘strong political’ condemnation has come from the prime minister, which was ‘shameful’ and exposed the reluctance of the government to take any ‘strong and clear’ position on Kashmir.
He questioned the silence of the parliament’s Special Committee on Kashmir headed by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-F chief Fazlur Rehman. He said that Pakistan was a party to the Kashmir issue which is not an internal matter of the Indian state as it was a dispute before the UN Security Council since 1948 when India took the issue before the council under Chapter VI of the UN Charter.
He demanded of the UN Security Council to take immediate notice of the killings by the Indian military of unarmed Kashmiris in the disputed state as it had direct responsibility to intervene in the region. He also pointed out that in the UN Resolution 47 (1948), the council had noted with satisfaction that both Pakistan and India had agreed to the holding of a free and impartial plebiscite in Jammu Kashmir. He said that it was the duty of the UN to ensure that this took place.
He also said that generation after generation of Kashmiris had risen up to fight the foreign occupation and that the indigenous uprising was part of the struggle for self-determination as guaranteed to the Kashmiris by the UN and as agreed by both Pakistan and India. He said that both the countries must abide by the wishes of the Kashmiri people and this could only be determined through a plebiscite held under the supervision of the UN.
He said that the Indian military’s killings in India-held Kashmir were gross violation of the human rights including the right of people to protest peacefully. He said that India’s claims of being the world’s largest democracy rings hollow in the light of its army’s massacre of the Kashmiris in the region. He stressed that the military force was never a viable response to the people seeking justice and right to self-determination.
He said that the government of Pakistan should undertake a diplomatic offensive to compel the international community to break its deafening silence on the continued killing spree of the Indian army in the region. “But for that the government has to have clarity of policy and it appears the (Nawaz) Sharif government has no clarity,” he added.
