Barrister Sultan Mehmood Choudhary, former Prime Minister of Azad Kashmir and Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Secretary General, World Kashmir Awareness Forum in a memorandum submitted to the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres urged the UN to play a leadership role in resolving the 70-year-old Kashmir conflict.
According to information reaching here from New York on Friday, they maintained that the Kashmir dispute has inflicted pain, agony, and injustice on a scale that makes East Timor, and Southern Sudan pale in comparison. More than 100,000 killings in the past two decade alone, and routine rape, torture, mutilation, plunder, disappearances, arbitrary detentions, and ruthless punishment of peaceful political dissent.
Kashmir conflict is perhaps the most dangerous conflict in the world because of the spiralling nuclear and missile race between India and Pakistan coupled with historical enmities that have occasioned three wars between the two rivals. It is obvious that no settlement can last if it is not based on justice for the people of Kashmir and recognition of their inherent rights, they argued.
It is also undeniable that the past 70 years have proven that bilateral India-Pakistan negotiations to resolve Kashmir conflict are simply charades that achieve nothing but more strife and horror stories in Kashmir. A new negotiating formula is thus urgently required both in the name of international peace, security and human rights. The element that has been missing in efforts towards a settlement is the political representation of Kashmiris on the negotiating table along with India and Pakistan.
The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) that represents the broader spectrum of the opinion of the Kashmiri people is unswervingly devoted to a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir dispute, and is eager to explore constructive approaches to jump-starting the longstanding Kashmir stalemate that has ensued when the problem has been perceived as bilateral, to the exclusion of the 20 million Kashmiri people. As Northern Ireland required the participation of Sinn Fein in negotiations to succeed, Kashmir is no different, they argued.
"We completely endorse the statement of the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights who expressed serious concern about the situation in (Indian held) Kashmir and proposed on September 13, 2016 that "an independent, impartial and international mission is now needed crucially and that it should be given free and complete access to establish an objective assessment of the claims made by the two sides.
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