Staff Reporter
Islamabad
The Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) President Sardar Masood Khan has called upon the international community to come forward and help Pakistan and the Kashmiri people to resolve the Kashmir issue in order to avert the looming disastrous war in the region and to protect the international order based on the rule of law.
Speaking as the chief guest at Karachi Literature Festival organized by Oxford University Press, he said that Pakistan wanted to resolve the Kashmir conflict through negotiations but India was not ready for that.
The AJK president asserted that the people of Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir were not in favor bilateral talks with India because India has always used bilateral mechanism as a tool to hoodwink the Kashmiri people as well as the international community, and to perpetuate its illegal occupation of Kashmir.
“After Indian actions of August 5 and October 31 last year and reaction of global civil society and world media had exposed India’s false narrative on Kashmir and now it is responsibility of the international community particularly the United Nations to take notice of humanitarian crisis erupted in occupied Kashmir,” he asserted.
The international community, he added must also stop India from carrying out genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri people, help lift siege, curfew and lockdown of the held territory.
Sardar Masood Khan said that it was obligatory for the international community to implement the UN Security Council resolutions on Kashmir, and provide the Kashmiri people an opportunity to determine their future with free will.
Referring to the US President Donald Trump’s offer of mediation for the solution of Kashmir issue, the AJK president said that the mediation should be credible and with the backing of the permanent five members of the UN Security Council.
Commenting on the Taliban-US agreement, he said that after 19 long years of war, at last America has realized to resolve the Afghan problem through talks and diplomacy and by accepting the Taliban as a party to the Afghanistan issue. Today, he maintained, the youth of Jammu and Kashmir also say that we must not give up the path of resistence because the Afghanistan issue teaches a lesson that the path of diplomacy passes through the corridors of armed struggle.
Sardar Masood Khan stressed the educationists, professionals and media experts to take advantage of the opportunities provided by the world parliaments and media, and draw up a narrative on the Kashmir issue to convince the world that the Indian actions had posed serious dangers to not only this region but the entire world.
He said that if war breaks out between Pakistan and India, it will claim 130 million human lives and affect two billion other people as well. Besides, he continued, the entire world will have to face economic and environmental issues as a result of this war.
Appreciating the efforts Oxford University Press for organizing Karachi Literature Festival (KLF), AJK President said that the event held every year creates a tremendous space for an exchange of ideas and promotion of literature in Pakistan.
“It is great to see that the festival’s organisers have created and sustained a literary space which was dying because of other available mediums,” he added.
Masood Khan said that he was glad to see that the attendees looked satisfied and at peace, free enough to attend a literature festival. “Unfortunately, people in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir do not have such luxury.” The function was also addressed by Mr. Mike, Dr. Ahdaf Sohaif, Haris Khaliq and Managing Director Oxford University Press Arshad Saeed Hussain.
