Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: National Assembly Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq has said that the Kashmir issue is not just a territorial dispute but also a matter of people’s inherent right to self-determination.

Brutal force and propaganda cannot gag the voice of freedom nor it can alter Pakistan’s resolute and principled stance on the issue of Kashmir, the speaker said in his message on the eve of the Kashmir Solidarity Day, to be commemorated across Pakistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir today (February 5) to express solidarity with the Kashmiri brethren.

Referring to the future of South Asia and the Kashmir dispute, the speaker remarked that peace in South Asia will remain allusive when the world’s so-called largest democracy unleash brutal force against the people of Kashmir.

He added that it was an irony that the international community “stands as a silent spectator, while India renege on UN resolutions and launch violence, fake encounters, enforced disappearances, rape, murders, and the use of pellet guns against defenceless population as India’s officially sanctioned policy” in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK). He urged the United Nations and the international community to ensure the implementation of its own resolutions on Kashmir.

Highlighting Pakistan’s steadfast support to the freedom struggle of the Kashmiri people, the speaker reinforced Pakistan’s unwavering historic stance on Kashmir and said that the people and the government of Pakistan would continue to provide all kinds of moral, diplomatic and political support to the Kashmiri people at every forum. He highlighted that recently the National Assembly of Pakistan hosted an international conference on Kashmir to urge the international community to play a larger role in resolution of the Kashmir problem and take notice of Indian highhandedness in the occupied territory. He remarked that forceful occupation of Kashmir was against the modern norms of nation state and people’s basic right to self-determination – the right to form government as per people’s aspirations free from foreign interference.

Meanwhile, NA Deputy Speaker Murtaza Javed Abbasi also reaffirmed that Pakistan would continue to provide unflinching moral, diplomatic and political support to the Kashmir cause at various international forums.