FM Qureshi says India putting major US interests in South Asia at stake

The Indian government is gaslighting the international community into normalizing the de facto annexation of Indian-occupied Kashmir, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Friday said in an opinion piece for American news outlet CNN.

He warned that New Delhi was putting major US interests at stake with ethno-nationalist saber-rattling in the South Asian region.

"India's government wants to gaslight the international community into normalizing India's de facto annexation of the Muslim-majority state," Qureshi wrote in the opinion piece.

"India is ethno-nationalist saber-rattling in a region with major US interests and international stability at stake," the minister warned, possibly alluding to the precarious security situation in Afghanistan.

Qureshi further said that the draconian measures of the Indian government in occupied Kashmir were moving the security situation in the region towards the unthinkable.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi wrote that the unilateral move of India on August 5 abrogated the special autonomous status granted to Jammu and Kashmir within its constitution.

"What has followed has reminded the world of the extremism and xenophobia that still plagues it and has forced everyone to call the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party-led Indian government out on its actions."

Qureshi added that the people of Kashmir had been under total lockdown and had continued to see shortages of food and medicine, while thousands had been detained through mass arrests.

"Using the familiar tactics of night raids, alleged torture, a media blackout and the suppression of protests, the Indian government has been trying desperately to conceal occupied Kashmir situation," he said.

FM Qureshi demanded the international community expose the reality that the BJP government was enacting through a nefarious political agenda being pursued in India.

"In its plans to allow Indians to buy land in Kashmir, India's government is putting Kashmir's Muslim majority at risk-a policy that could change Kashmir's identity," Qureshi warned.

In Pakistan's opinion, he added, this violated the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibited a country from transporting its own people into occupied territory.

The foreign minister further maintained that as the country that had always committed itself to speaking up for the people of Kashmir, Pakistan could not be silent on the unfolding catastrophe in Kashmir.

"We must not be naïve about what is happening in Kashmir, and India must be stopped before this goes any further," Qureshi wrote in his opinion piece.