Islamabad
Sardar Masood Khan, President Azad Jammu and Kashmir, has said that the performance audit of the United Nations on Kashmir last year, since 5th August 2020, has been zero efforts and zero endeavours; except for the three informal sessions held at the UN Security Council shoehorn, that too at the initiative of Pakistan and the help of China. The UN leadership’s reaction, he said, has been limited to the very few anodyne statements issued periodically.
The President made these remarks while addressing a seminar titled, “Piecing Peace Together: Shared Future for Humanity”, jointly organised by the Parliamentary Kashmir Committee and Islamabad Institute for Conflict Resolution (IICR). The event was also addressed by Speaker National Assembly Mr. Asad Qaiser, Minister for Food Security and Research Syed Fakhar Imam, Chairman Senate Committee of Foreign Relations Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed, Ambassador Ashraf Jahangir Qazi, and Director Institute of Multi-Track Dialogue Development and Diplomatic Studies Dr Waleed Rasool.
Speaking on the sub-theme “Peace Quest for Kashmir: Hunting ways under Indian occupation and global moral regression”, the AJK President said that the UN has failed miserably in holding India accountable for committing genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the systematic settlement of non-Kashmiri Hindu citizens from all over India in the occupied territory.
The UN has no agenda for peace in Kashmir; no process for peacemaking, peacekeeping or peacebuilding for the 14 million people living in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir who are under direct attack of 900,000 strong occupation forces. “The world is not safe if Kashmir is not safe. UN has displayed an unforgiving dereliction from its prime duty and responsibility of maintaining world peace”, he said.
The President said that the Indian government has granted 1.7 million illegal domiciles to non-state Hindus from all over India. He said that a systematic ethnic cleansing is taking place in IOJK and the Kashmiris have been disenfranchised and are being killed with impunity. “Global powers through their silence have emboldened India and it continues its reign of terror in IOJK with no ill consequences. India’s colonial government is seeking exceptionalism for its human rights violations in IOJK”, he said. President Masood Khan said that last year after August 5, there was a strong reaction from world parliaments, media and opinion makers, but now the issue has mellowed down and people are not actively raising the issue due to other global issues. With the exception of Iran, Turkey, Malaysia, China and a few Nordic countries, no other country spoke up openly for Kashmir.
“We have learned this lesson the hard way that we are not going to be given Kashmir. We can only achieve it if we make this (Kashmir) a global movement”, he said.
