Daily Times

Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar has said that India’s illegal and unilateral actions of 5 August 2019 in IIOJK were a blatant violation of international law including the UN Charter, 4th Geneva Convention and the relevant UN Security Council resolutions. “India has since been engaged in efforts to further entrench these illegal measures through a series of steps aimed at altering the demographic structure and political landscape of IIOJK,” the prime minister said in a message on the observance of Kashmir Solidarity Day on February 5. He said that the ‘Kashmir Solidarity Day’ was annually observed on the 5th February to express Pakistan’s unwavering support to the Kashmiri people’s just struggle for realization of their right to self-determination. It was also an occasion to pay rich tribute to the sacrifices made by their Kashmiri brothers and sisters during the last seventy-six years, he added. The prime minister said that Pakistan had consistently maintained that a lasting solution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute was possible only in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions and wishes of the Kashmiri people. “Pakistan will continue to extend its unstinted moral, diplomatic and political support for this just cause,” Prime Minister Office Media Wing, in a press release, quoted the prime minister as saying. He further said that the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions provided that the final disposition of Jammu and Kashmir would be made in accordance with the will of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, expressed through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the United Nations. However, the caretaker prime minister said, over the last seventy-six years, India had carried out a relentless campaign to intimidate and suppress the people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). In IIOJK, the iron-fisted Indian approach frequently manifested itself in extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detentions and custodial torture, he added. Prime Minister Kakar said India had muzzled the media and incarcerated the Kashmiri leadership and human rights defenders, adding these excesses have been well-documented by several human rights organizations and international media outlets. He said the Indian Supreme Court’s judgment of 11 December 2023 on the status of IIOJK was another step towards denial of the Kashmir people’s right to self-determination. However, the genuine aspirations of the Kashmiri people could not be undermined through such domestic legislation or judicial verdicts, he observed. The prime minister said that India must allow unrestricted access to the UN and OIC observers, international media and human rights organizations to IIOJK to obtain first-hand information about the situation there; and investigate and report human rights violations.