Daily Times

Pakistan has strongly protested India’s decision to hold Group of 20 meetings in the UN-recognized disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir later this month, and urged New Delhi not to misuse its position as chair of the body of world’s largest economies to “advance their own national agenda.”

“These stage-managed events are designed to project a false normalcy in occupied Jammu & Kashmir,” Ambassador Munir Akram told an ambassadorial-level meeting of the Group of 77, which now has 134 members and is the United Nations’ biggest intergovernmental group of emerging countries.

India currently holds the rotating year-long presidency of the G20 and is set to host a leaders’ summit in New Delhi in early September.

Wednesday’s meeting was convened to hear from India’s UN Ambassador Ruchira Kamboj about the agenda of a series of meetings leading up to the summit, which included G20 and Youth 20 meetings in Srinagar and in Leh, in the neighbouring region of Ladakh.

“In this context,” Ambassador Akram said, ” Pakistan is obliged to register its strong protest at India’s decision to hold one or more G-20 meetings in the UN-recognized disputed territory of Jammu & Kashmir, which India occupies in contravention of UN Security Council resolutions and where the right of self-determination of the Kashmiri people, and other fundamental rights, are being suppressed by an occupation force of 900,000 Indian troops.” The Pakistani envoy reminded delegates of he UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and over a dozen Special Rapporteurs of the Human Rights Council, having asked India for access to Indian-occupied Jammu & Kashmir to investigate reports of gross violations of human rights.

“Instead of inviting G-20 delegations,” Ambassador Akram added, “India should accede to the request of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and the dozen or more human rights Special Rapporteurs, and invite them to occupied Kashmir, provide them unhindered access to the territory and its people and thus enable them to observe and report on the reality of the massive oppression in Indian occupied Jammu & Kashmir.”

Reacting to the Pakistani envoy’s statement, India’s Ambassador said her country’s position on Kashmir was well known.