‘Walk the talk’: Kashmir civil society tells Pakistan
Islamabad-based think tank hosts virtual event to mark international day of right to self-determination for Kashmiris
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan should take practical steps towards forcing India to end the occupation of Kashmir, several members of Kashmir and Pakistan civil society said on Tuesday.
Addressing an international virtual conference — Kashmir’s Struggle for Right of Self-Determination, hosted by Islamabad-based Legal Forum for Kashmir — the speakers urged a national policy in Pakistan towards Kashmir and rued that political parties in the country used Kashmir for their petty interests.
“Pakistan should walk the talk,” said US-based academic Imtiaz Khan, who is associated with the Georgetown University Washington.
The UN on Jan. 5, 1949 granted the right to self-determination to people of undivided Jammu and Kashmir to decide their fate and Kashmiris and Pakistan every year commemorates this day as the international day for right to self-determination for Kashmiris.
Through this resolution, the United Nations affirmed its support for the realization of the inalienable right to self-determination of Kashmiris — a right from which all other fundamental freedoms and basic human rights emanate.
“Pakistani politicians are busy in pulling the rug out of each other and Kashmir is being used for domestic agenda,” he said referring to Nawaz Sharif’s visit to India and refusing to meet Kashmiri pro-freedom leaders when he was Pakistan’s prime minister in 2014.
“We have not seen words of Prime Minister Imran Khan turning in to action… It is all talk and talk and no action,” said Khan referring to Khan’s statement that he is ambassador of Kashmir.
Khan proposed to Pakistan to form a joint parliamentary committee with Turkey which has also supported the Kashmir case “and visit all countries and explain Kashmir situation.”
He said India has no intention to solve Kashmir.
“Form a committee to highlight Kashmir at international forums… There should be a looming threat of nuclear war… border should be heated up and only then the world may think of Kashmir,” he said urging Pakistan to “walk the talk on Kashmir. Pakistan has to be hyperactive on Kashmir”.
- ‘Everything but pro-India politics banned in Kashmir’
Middle East-based medical practitioner Asif Dar said Pakistan has made “every effort to free Kashmir.”
“Would it not have been for Pakistan, Indians would have run over Kashmiris all along,” he asserted.
“The colossal denial by state of India [of right to self-determination to Kashmiris] has been cause of the catastrophe because the right is always natural and its denial is unnatural,” he said.
“And this denial needs brute military and economic force and that is what 700,000 forces of India, of various kind, are doing in Kashmir,” he added.
Slamming denial of handing over bodies of armed rebels to their families in Kashmir, Dar said: “The latest denial of right to self-determination is in the form of changing the demographic structure of Muslim majority Jammu and Kashmir by settling Hindu colonizers.”
He said India has banned everything in Kashmir but pro-India politics while “Indian army in Kashmir is battle-ready army which can enter anyone’s bedroom in just two-minutes”.
- Call for special envoy on Jammu and Kashmir
Describing the ground situation in Indian-administered Kashmir, Hameedah Nayeem, who teaches at the University of Kashmir in Indian-administered Kashmir, said: “after August 05, 2019… Narendra Modi has opened Kashmir, for free, to all and everyone [ from India] to come and buy and in Kashmir. And already, they have made a land bank here and got every detail of state land.”
She said it was a “long-cherished Hindu agenda.”
“And Pakistan should have been all fire over this but its political parties are actually helping India. They should have been together in supporting Kashmir. Marking days is not going to help Kashmir,” she said calling for a “well-thought-out, resulted-oriented strategy on Kashmir.”
“Pakistan has to stand,” she asserted.
Ambassador Abdul Basit called on Kashmiris to “continue to strive for their freedom from India.”
“Pakistan needs to up the ante and the first step in that direction would be to appoint a special envoy on Kashmir,” said Basit, who served as Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India.
The special envoy on Jammu and Kashmir will allow Pakistan to have a “solid strategy both in its internal and external ends.”
“We should not lose hope,” he asserted.
