Autonomous status to Northern Areas: Yasin Malik expresses concern over government decision

Expressing serious concerns over the government's decision to give Northern Areas autonomous status, Chairman Kashmir Liberation Front Yasin Malik said that Pakistan broke its promise of not intervening in the matter of disputed territory for the first time in 62 years.
He was talking to media at the Iftar dinner of Prime Minister Azad Kashmir Sardar Muhammad Yaqoob here at Kashmir House. Malik termed the decision against the UN resolution on Kashmir, saying the area is disputed and government should not have taken the decision without taking the stakeholders into confidence.
Malik said that decision is not less than "a bullet and arrow" for the Kashmiri people. He feared that similar model would also applied in Azad Kashmir in future. He questioned whether Kashmiris are only for rendering sacrifices and no one is here to respect the over 122000 Kashmiri martyrs. Dispelling the impression of the government that it took all the concerned stakeholders into confidence over the decision, Yasin Malik said that Kashmiris are key stakeholders of the issue who were not taken into confidence and the government did not bother to consult them. Before taking such a major decision, he said, government must have convened a consultative meeting of the leaders of both sides of Kashmir.
Malik urged political parties, civil society organisations and people of Pakistan to press the government to initiate debate on the decision in and outside of the Parliament. To a question, he said, Kashmiris do not want to pressurise people of Gilgit-Baltistan to decide about their future. Rather, he said, they must be given democratic right to decide their own about their future and Kashmiris would respect their will.