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The dispute over Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) is part of the unfinished agenda of Partition of the Indian subcontinent into two independent states of Pakistan and India by the British rulers in August of 1947. This dispute has already led to three wars over the last 74 years between the two nuclear states. Another war between two nuclear-armed could lead to wider consequences and therefore, the international community must intervene and finally resolve this issue.
It was India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru that took the J&K matter to the UN Security Council in 1948. As a result, United Nations Security Council Resolution 47, adopted on 21 April 1948, concerns the resolution of the Kashmir conflict.
The Resolution recommended a three-step process to resolve the dispute. In the first step, Pakistan would withdraw all its nationals that entered Kashmir for the sake of fighting. In the second step, India would gradually reduce its forces to the minimum level required for law and order. In the third step, India would appoint a plebiscite administrator nominated by the United Nations who would conduct a free and impartial plebiscite.
Sadly, the UN never implemented this UNSC resolution for whatever reasons and the people of J&K have been yearning to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination, as promised to them by both UNSC and first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. I remind Indians and their current government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi the commitment made to Kashmiris by their Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on the floor of Indian parliament in August 1952:
“We do not wish to win people against their will with the help of armed force; and if the people of Kashmir wish to part company with us, they may go their way and we shall go ours. We want no forced marriages, no forced unions.”
We in Pakistan do not consider Indian occupied J&K as a legal and integral part of India since the Kashmiri people have never expressed their wish to join India or Pakistan in a free and impartial plebiscite. Therefore, Article 370 of the Indian constitution was never our concern, as it was more of an understanding between Nehru and pro-India Kashmiri leader Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah without the consent of the Kashmiri people.
We believe that Indian controlled J&K is occupied territory according to the Fourth Geneva Convention and that the UN must ensure the rights of people under occupation. Article 32 of the Geneva IV prohibits torture against civilians in the occupied territory and Article 49 prohibits demographic changes through either deporting occupied civilians or occupying power transferring its civilian population into occupied territory. By revoking Article 370 of the Indian Constitution on August 5, 2019, India has revealed its intention of changing the demographics of J&K.
We must not tolerate the use of “weapons of Mass Migration” like Israeli policy in the Occupied Territories of Palestine in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, where the Indian state will inject non-Kashmiris to change both the demography and geography of the area.
The unprecedented move by the Indian Government to revoke Kashmir’s relative “autonomy” is a wake-up call to other minorities in India that they might experience the same fate of J&K’s majority Muslim population if they dare to stand up to the central government.
The fascist and Nazi mindset of PM Modi and his party is a threat not just to people of J&K or other minorities in India but also to world peace. We cannot allow another appeasement to occur as the world witnessed in 1938 with Hitler that led to World War II and the destruction of Europe. The race and hate-based ideology of Nazism spewed by Hitler resulted in the “final solution” where the Nazis exterminated over 6 million Jews and other ethnic groups in concentration camps. The world community must nip this problem in the bud on a war footing.
Given the history of the Holocaust during World War II and the present threat of ethnic cleansing and genocide in occupied J&K of Kashmiri Muslims, why is the international community still silent and apathetic? When will it act? When there are 100,000 exterminated, 500,000 or 1 million?
The people of Pakistan challenge and appeals to the anti-war activists in the West to stop ignoring the oppression in occupied Jammu and Kashmir by India and start lobbying and protesting your respective governments to act on this grave issue, as the fallout of war could be a nuclear holocaust. This is your litmus test if you truly believe in anti-war.
In the end, the only just solution is plebiscite and allowing the Kashmiris to decide their fate even if it means that they want to be an independent country and not part of either Pakistan or India. This 74-year-old dispute is a failure of the UN and international community who do not have the will to enforce its resolutions. UN cherry-picks what resolutions it wants to enforce and which ones to ignore.
Why can the UN conduct an independence referendum in East Timor on August 30, 1999, but cannot have one in Kashmir for over 70 years? Injustice in Kashmir is a threat to justice everywhere.
We ask India, why have you been hoodwinking the people of Jammu and Kashmir and the international community for over seven decades? We want to see the world powers play their role as honest brokers instead of silent spectators and stop the oppression that has been occurring in Jammu and Kashmir for decades by the state of India.
My message to the people of occupied Jammu and Kashmir is to stay steadfast and brave as the people of Pakistan and its government will never leave you alone in your time of crisis.
