Additional info on India's HR violations: Qureshi again writes letter to UNSC president

ISLAMABAD: In the wake of one year of India's illegal and unilateral measures of 5 August 2019 in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK), Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has once again written to the president of the UN Security Council sharing additional information on India's continuing massive violations of human rights in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, and its attempt to change demography.

In his letter, the foreign minister also mentioned India's escalating ceasefire violations and rhetoric against Pakistan, which together pose a threat to regional and international peace and security. Qureshi has highlighted how, through a combination of military siege in Kashmir, internet and communication blackout, imprisoned Kashmiri political leaders, and abducted Kashmiri youth, India is seeking to camouflage ongoing systematic torture, extra-judicial killings, and imposition of collective punishment on Kashmiris.

These atrocities epitomize India's brutality in suppressing Kashmiris' resistance against Indian occupation for over seven decades. "Pakistan has also circulated two papers as official documents of the Security Council: one, on the legal aspects of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute, and the second, on India's violations of human rights in the IIOJK," the Foreign Office said. The legal document apprises the Council members and the world community of the legitimacy of the Kashmiris' demand for self-determination.

Likewise, the document on India's human rights violations will be a permanent and damning testimony to India's long record of oppression and serious crimes against the Kashmiri people, it added. The foreign minister, in his letter, has emphasized that India's intensified ceasefire violations along the LOC and its belligerent posture towards Pakistan pose a threat to peace and security. He urged the council to strengthen the UN Military Observers Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to enable it to report fully and accurately on the gravity of the security environment in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

Reminding the Security Council of its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, the foreign minister has called on the council to meet to consider the consequences of India's military siege in the occupied Jammu and Kashmir and the serious threat Indian aggressive posture pose to peace and security in South Asia.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020