Pakistan is pushing the international community to pressurise India into allowing the struggling Kashmiri people to exercise their UN-pledged right of self-determination through a plebiscite to pave the way for peace and stability in the region, Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi Saturday said.
Speaking at a large gathering of Pakistani and Kashmiri community members, she denounced the brutal tactics employed by Indian security forces in suppressing the mass uprising, and described the prolonged curfews in occupied Kashmir as "107 days of shame and infamy".
More than 115 Kashmiri people have been killed and 15,000 more injured, with 150 permanently blinded by deadly pellet injuries in protests against the killing of the popular Kashmiri Youth leader, Burhan Wani.
"Under the direction and advice of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, we have raised and continue to raise the Kashmir dispute at all forms of the United Nations," Ambassador Lodhi told the meeting held at Pakistan House to mark the anniversary of India's massive invasion and occupation of Kashmir on 27 October 1947, known as "Black Day."
She said the prime minister had set the pace when he addressed the UN General Assembly's high-level session in September and made a clarion call for the grant of UN-pledged right of self-determination to the people of Kashmir and demanded an international probe into the atrocities let loose by Indian security forces in occupied Kashmir.
The Pakistan delegation to the UN kept up the momentum by focusing the international community's attention to human rights violations in Kashmir and the people's struggle for freedom from Indian yoke, she said at meeting, which was organized by Pakistan Consulate General in New York.
"Today is not the only 'Black Day' in Kashmir - every day in Kashmir is black as long as the state is under occupation," the Pakistani envoy said, adding that Pakistan would continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the Kashmiri brethren in their struggle for self-determination.