Qureshi slams violence against mourners in IOJ&K

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi on Tuesday said India was committing the “worst kinds of atrocities, tyranny and violence” against the innocent people of Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJ&K) which also exposed its “sham claims over religious tolerance”.

In a press statement, the foreign minister said Muharram processions in held Kashmir were not allowed and later, the participants were subjected to violence and arrested. Pellet guns were also used against the mourners.

The foreign minister said mosques were closed on the occasion of Eid and now during the observance of Muharram unprecedented incidents of cruelty and tyranny were witnessed. “Such a gloomy scenario in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir has angered the whole Muslim Ummah,” he added.

Qureshi urged international human rights organisations, civil society and especially the international media to raise their collective voices over such grave situation.

He said during the coronavirus pandemic, which was spreading at rapid speed, the worst kinds of atrocities and aggression continued against the innocent people of Kashmir. The Indian government was mishandling the pandemic.

Meanwhile, Pakistan’s envoy to the United Nations, Munir Akram, has called on the UN Security Council to shift some of its focus from combating al-Qaeda and Daesh to Hindutva extremists in India terrorising Muslims, as he stressed the need for the 15-member body to reform its counter-terrorism work.

“Terrorism has proliferated across the world,” Ambassador Akram told a virtual meeting of the General Assembly which discussed the annual report of the Security Council on its actions to maintain international peace and security.

Pointing out deficiencies in the council’s work, the Pakistan envoy said that while keeping focus on al-Qaeda and Daesh, it had “ignored terrorism by extremist and fascist organisations, including the Hindutva groups terrorising Muslims.

“It has allowed the labels of terrorism to compromise the legitimate struggles of peoples under colonial and alien domination for self-determination. It has also ignored state terrorism which is used for oppressing and brutalizing peoples under occupation.”

The council, Ambassador Akram said, has also failed to implement its own resolutions and decisions, including on the decades-old Jammu and Kashmir dispute. “For over seventy years, India has illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir in blatant violation of the resolutions of the Security Council; it is perpetrating a reign of terror in a territory occupied with 900,000 troops; it has imposed a complete siege on eight million Kashmiris in the valley and it is perpetrating massive violations of human rights against them and against its own minority communities,” he told the council.

“In the wake of its illegal and unilateral actions of August 5, 2019, the BJP-RSS government is putting in place what they have themselves called the ‘final solution’ for Jammu and Kashmir — demographic flooding of occupied Kashmir by settler communities to completely disempower and disenfranchise the Kashmiri people and to obliterate their Muslim identity and that of the occupied territory.”

In this regard, the Pakistani envoy said the council met thrice in one year on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, reaffirming its disputed status and that a final settlement based on Security Council resolutions.