Bilawal raises voice against India's unlawful delimitation exercise in IOJK

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari wrote a letter to the United Nations Security Council and the UN's secretary-general regarding India's unlawful "delimitation" exercise in the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJK), a statement by the foreign ministry said Wednesday. 

According to the statement, Bilawal drew attention to India's ploy of reducing the representation of Muslims through the illegal "delimitation" exercise.

Pakistan continues to internationally highlight the alarming situation in the IOJK in the wake of India’s illegal and unilateral actions on August 5 2019.

Bilawal underscored that these illegal measures constitute a flagrant violation of the international law, including the UN Charter, and said the relevant Security Council resolutions on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute were ipso facto illegal and null and void.

Highlighting India’s gross, systematic and widespread human rights violations in IOJK, Bilawal also drew particular attention to the ongoing Indian efforts to further marginalise, disempower, and divide the beleaguered Kashmiri population.

He noted that this was a shameless assault on the identity, fundamental rights of the people, and culture of IOJK, and was designed to pave the way for installing yet another puppet government in IOJK that is pliant to BJP-RSS combine, and panders to its “Hindutva” ideology.

He also emphasised that under the garb of this inherently ill-intentioned process, India had attempted to carry out demographic engineering in the IOJK in a bid to convert Muslim majority constituencies into Hindu-majority ones.

"Through the sham 'delimitation' exercise, it is obvious that India is aiming to speed up the process of demographic changes that it has already set in motion through measures such as doling out millions of domicile certificates, offering jobs, and putting up land in IOJK for sale to non-Kashmiris, in complete disregard to the international law and relevant Geneva Conventions," he said.

He urged the UN Security Council:

To remind India that Jammu and Kashmir remain an internationally recognised dispute pending resolution and that India should refrain from bringing about any illegal demographic changes in the occupied territory in contravention to international law, the Geneva Conventions, and India’s own obligations under the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.

To compel and counsel India to halt its human rights abuses against the people of IOJK and cease forthwith the endemic political persecution and economic exploitation of the Kashmiris.

To prevail upon India to let the people of IIOJK determine their own future through a free and fair plebiscite under the United Nations auspices as enshrined in the relevant UN Security Council resolutions.