‘Kashmir and Kashmiris belong to us’

Islamabad: Jammu and Kashmir Council for Human Rights (JKCHR) President Dr. Syed Nazir Gilani Sunday said that Kashmir has become a casualty of Track II engagement between Pakistan and India, says a press release.

Dr Gilani, president of JKCHR – NGO in Special Consultative Status with the United Nations said that as long as people of like understanding and matching merit are pitched against each other in these engagements, there is an insurance of parity.

“The risk of loose lips is minimised. Unfortunately people of a very low calibre and looking for inroads are recruited from both sides of cease fire line and from both India and Pakistan. These are the foot soldiers to shoulder the Indian liberalism and secularism. They have no merit and are embedded as escorts,” he added.

Pointing towards the hint of talks with Hurriyat leadership in occupied Kashmir and Pakistan by the Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Dr Gilani said that it is after a long drawn lull in Indian mood not to talk to Hurriyat and other stakeholders in Kashmir. “However the merits of the offer remain complicated for Pakistan and Hurriyat. Hurriyat has been equally poked in the eye by Rajnath Singh saying that “Kashmir and Kashmiris are both ours.”

Dr Gilani pointed out that if Government of India is not ‘misguided’ by the revelations by the books of former president General Musharraf and General Asad Durrani as both persons have been casual with their lips and lose lips, always sink ships, but Indians could not deny the signature of Kashmiri sentiment behind the united Hurriyat.

“If Indians have not read too much into these two books written by these two Generals and misguided themselves by the information volunteered off and around these books, India has to take steps to talk to five out of the six interest groups identified by the UN Security Council at its 241st meeting held on 5 February 1948. There is no doubt that both Generals would have studied the discipline of military science to the core. It does not however, qualify them to be experts on the jurisprudence of Kashmir case,” he added.