By Altaf Hussain Wani
The G-20 working group meeting on tourism held in Srinagar the capital of the Indian occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir has proved a huge embarrassment for New Delhi. The conference, which was started with great pomp and show, has failed on multiple counts. Primarily, it has been a great diplomatic failure as India’s presidency of the G20 group of leading economic giants became mired in controversy after China and Pakistan raised strong objections over Modi government’s plan to host the summit events in the held territory.
Pakistan, a main stakeholder in the Kashmir dispute, voiced its serious concerns over India’s controversial move to host the meeting in Srinagar. While condemning the move, the Pakistan foreign office pointed out that India was using the G-20 platform to achieve its political objectives and showcase a false image of normalcy in Kashmir.
Secondly, the People’s Republic of China, a key member of the Group, firmly opposed holding any kind of G20 meetings in disputed territory. “China firmly opposes holding any form of G20 meeting in disputed areas and China will not attend such a meeting,” Chinese foreign ministry said. China had not only boycotted the Working Group meeting held in Srinagar but it had also boycotted a science-related meeting of G20 in Arunachal Pradesh, to which it lays claim as Southern Tibet.
A week before the start of high-profile confer-ence India had to face an unprecedented backlash from the UN Human Rights expert over holding summit events in the restive region (Kashmir). Professor Fernand de Vareness, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issue in a detailed statement released to the press on May 15, 2023 stated that the G20 is unwittingly providing a veneer of support to a façade of normalcy in Kashmir at a time when massive human rights violations, illegal and arbitrary arrests, political persecutions, re-tractions and even suppression of free media and human rights defenders continue to escalate.
And above all, what the renowned American philosopher, linguist and political analyst Mr. Noam Chomsky said was sufficient enough to stir the world conscience. “It is unconscionable for G20 to hold any kind of meeting let alone a tourism meeting in the region of occupied and brutalized Kashmir”, Chomsky said.
While discussing the genesis of the Kashmir dispute, Noam Chomsky in a video message that went viral appealed to the G20 countries to stay away from the meeting.
Another diplomatic blow, which triggered shock waves within the political and diplomatic circles across India, was when it was relayed to the Modi government that five important countries including Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Egypt, Oman and Turkey refused to attend the meeting at the eleventh hour.
To India’s utter dismay, the rest of the G-20 na-tions also maintained a very low profile and scaled down their participation in the summit events, which literally perished the Modi’s dream of portraying Kashmir as India’s internal problem.
Pertinently, India’s decision to hold the meeting in the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir was not only to showcase its potential for tourism but also to signal restoration of stability and normalcy in the region. But key countries’ decision to stay away from the conference was obviously a clear-cut message to New Delhi that they didn’t want to create any kind of controversy vis-à-vis Kashmir by attending the meeting being held in the region, which they consider as a disputed territory. While on the other hand, a lukewarm response to the G20 meeting in Srinagar from other countries has left New Delhi in utter shock as it miserably failed to achieve the desired results.
In a nutshell, the meeting has been a diplomatic setback for India as the Modi government badly failed in its attempts to use the G-20 forum to ma-nipulate and mislead the member states of G-20, in order to lend credibility to its illegal annexation of a region, which remains an internationally designated disputed zone.
So long as India’s myth of normalcy in Kashmir is concerned, the local and international media outlets covering the summit events in the region have left India exposed before the world. Various independent sources from the Indian occupied Jammu & Kashmir region have reported how the capital city Srinagar and other places were given a glittering facelift to project so-called development in the region.
Netizens and social media users mocked India over faking of normalcy in the region by posting images of the Indian army personnels hiding behind the large promotional banners erected on the main thoroughfare leading to the conference hall on the banks of Dal Lake. Busting the India’s myth of normalcy in Kashmir, media showed images of gun-wielding Indian army commandos patrolling on the roads while a G20 tourism meeting unfolded on the banks of Srinagar’s Dal Lake. And ordinary Kashmiris who were interviewed by media persons on the day termed it a shameless attempt on the part of India to misrepresent ground reality and questioned deployment of huge amounts of security personnel in the region.
While India attempted to exact a sense of normalcy by hosting the third G-20 tourism working group meeting in Kashmir amid heavy security, Kashmiris settled on both sides of the line of control and the world over observed complete strike and held demonstrations to register their resentment and indignation against the move, which raised questions of international acceptance. The call for strike was given by the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC)-a multi-organizational amalgam- that seeks resolution of the long-running Kashmir dispute in line with the UNSC resolutions. Kashmiri diaspora staged protest demonstrations at influential world capitals including, London, Brussels, New York and Washington demanding member countries to per-suade India to abide by her pledge and give the Kashmiris the right to self-determination. Digital advertising trucks flashing messages “Say No to G20 in occupied Kashmir’, “India quit Kashmir” and “De-colonize Kashmir” were seen playing on the roads in and around Capitol hill in Washington.
Dozens of op-eds and news stories raising seri-ous questions over India’s misuse of the G20 plat-form appeared in various regional and international newspapers. Pakistan’s foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, while addressing a public gathering in Azad Kashmir lambasted India for abusing its presidency of the G20 by holding a tourism conference. “They’re (Indians) abusing their presidency of the G20 to push their colonial agenda, but if they think that by holding one event in occupied Kashmir they can silence the voice of the Kashmiri people, then I believe that they are truly mistaken”, BBZ said.
Until recently, Pakistan was the only country to criticize India’s choice of Srinagar as one of the venues for G20 meetings, but later on several coun-tries joined the course and virtually endorsed Paki-stan’s stand on the issue. The key stakeholders’ decision of not sending their delegates to the Srinagar meeting yet again vindicated Pakistan’s and Kashmiri leaderships’ long-held and principled position on the issue of Kashmir.
[Writer is the chairman of Islamabad based think tank the Kashmir Institute of International Relations (KIIR); he can be reached by email [email protected]]
