First time in 26 years: No OIC FMs Contact Group meeting on Kashmir at UN summit

ISLAMABAD: The members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Foreign Minister’s Contact Group on Kashmir didn’t have its meeting on the fringes of the United Nations summit at its headquarters for the first time in 26 years of group’s creation. The group meets at least once on the brinks of UN summit. The group headed by the foreign minister of Turkey had a virtual meeting in June this year. Pakistan’s permanent representative office issued a report about the meeting of the group countries permanent representatives in the UN without participation of Turkey. Turkey's mission in New York didn’t respond the query about its permanent representative appearing in the group meeting. Turkey heads the group, but the Foreign Office here issued another and revised report with Turkey including in it. The OIC Secretary General was also absent from the meeting. The Foreign Office stated that an informal meeting in New York of the group discussed the worsening human rights situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK). The OIC Secretary General was represented by the Permanent Representative of the OIC Observer Mission to the UN, Ambassador Agshin Mehdiyev. The members of the Contact Group reviewed recent developments relating to IOK, including the grave human rights and humanitarian situation in occupied area and the tensions along the LoC. Pakistan’s permanent representative Ambassador Munir Akram said that the RSS-BJP regime in India was implementing what its rulers had themselves called a “Final Solution”. It was engaged in systematically engineering a demographic change in IOK through new domicile rules. The issuance of 1.6 million domicile certificates (since March) was meant to change the demography of occupied Kashmir from a Muslim majority into Hindu majority territory. In another attempt to obliterate the Muslim identity of IOK the status of Urdu language was being changed under a new legislation. Indian claims of “normalcy” in IOK

were fallacious. The joint communication by eighteen Special Mandate Holders of the Human Rights Council issued last month had termed the human rights situation in occupied Kashmir in “free fall”. Hundreds of young Kashmiris were extra judicially killed in “fake encounters” and “cordon and search” operations while the Indian security forces continued to enjoy complete impunity under black laws like Armed Forces Special Powers Act (APSPA) and the Public Safety Act (PSA).