Maleeha lashes out at India for ‘mass blinding in occupied Kashmir’

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN Maleeha Lodhi on Tuesday denounced India’s aggressive use of pellet guns against peaceful protesters in occupied Kashmir which has left many young Kashmiris blinded, saying the move amounted to “first mass blinding in human history.”

Addressing the General Assembly's Special Political and Decolonization (Fourth) Committee, Pakistan's UN Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said the UN's decolonisation agenda would remain incomplete without settling the Kashmir dispute on the basis of Security Council resolutions that pledged the right of self-determination to the Kashmiri people.

Maleeha said that India was committing war crimes which have left the young generation sightless and maimed for life.

This has been aptly described as the first mass blinding in human history, said the Pakistani ambassador to the UN, according to an official press release.

She emphasized that implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the decolonization agenda was not limited to the issue of Non-Self-Governing Territories, but also encompassed other peoples living under alien occupation.

"Our aim therefore should be to ensure that all peoples under colonial administration or foreign occupation are allowed to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination," the Pakistani representative said.

She further added, the Kashmiri people were still waiting for the organization to fulfill its promise to hold a United Nations-supervised plebiscite that would enable them to determine their own political destiny.

"This represents the most persistent failure of the United Nations," Ambassador Lodhi told delegates.

She further mentioned that over the last 70 years India has been preventing the Kashmiris from excercising their fundamental and inalienable right of self determination through force and fraud.

She said that the deployment of tens of thousands of Indian troops in the occupied territory is primarily aimed at suppressing the legitimate freedom of the people.

India uses all methods from barbaric violence and extreme cruelty to fraudulent elections to deprive the Kashmiris of their right to self determination and perpetuate its unlawful occupation she stated.

The people of Jammu and Kashmir will continue to wage the struggle for their right to self determination with courage and conviction, said the Pakistani envoy.