Daily Times

Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari strongly criticised the international community Monday for “turning a blind eye” to India’s savagery in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), saying it was “not wise to sacrifice timeless principles for short-term interests”.

Bilawal said holding a G-20 countries’ tourism group meeting in Srinagar was a sheer violation of the UN resolutions on Kashmir. Addressing special session of the AJK Legislative Assembly, he said the people of Kashmir had been denied of their basic right to self-determination for decades and now holding such a meeting in a most militarised zone of the world was not the proof that normalcy had returned, adding the right of the people could be usurped in the region.

Bilawal stated that history cannot be changed and emphasised that his purpose for attending the session was to engage in communication with the people of Kashmir.

He highlighted that the Kashmir issue remains the incomplete agenda of partition of India. Referring to 1947, he expressed that the blood of Kashmiri Muslims was tragically shed during that period.

“Today, I ask the world if a country can be allowed to renege on its solemn commitments to the United Nations, break its own promises and blatantly violate international law just because they want to,” he said in an address to the Azad Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly.

“I must emphasise here that the commitments under the UN Security Council resolutions are sacrosanct. They are neither surveilled to the whims of a jingoistic political party, nor diluted by the passage of time.”

He said India was “misusing” its position as the G20 chair by hosting the event in the occupied territory, which was recognised as disputed under international law. “This is yet another display of India’s arrogance on the world stage.”

He noted that IIOJK had become an open-air prison with thousands of Kashmiri Muslims killed, disappeared or blinded while their lands were confiscated and properties bulldozed, and their culture disintegrated.

The mayhem was continuing under India’s draconian laws, he said, which allowed the occupying forces’ officials impunity for their crimes. “This wretched perpetual and systemic Indian barbarism not just violates international law, it makes a mockery of the accepted norms of fundamental human rights.

“One cannot wax lyrical about international law and the United Nations Security Council resolutions in Europe in the European context, and then turn a blind eye to the violation of the same international law in the Kashmiri context,” he iterated.

The foreign minister emphasised that for Pakistan, resolving the Kashmir dispute was not a matter of choice but of duty.

Earlier in the day, a delegation of refugees hailing from Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) called on FM Bilawal.

The delegation apprised him of its reservations regarding G20 conference being held in Srinagar. The delegation appreciated the role of the foreign minister with regard to the movement of independence of Kashmir.

It also informed about the brutalities by Indian forces against the refugees coming to Azad Kashmir from IIOJK in 1990.

The issues regarding resettlement of the refugees were also discussed in the meeting.