India actively promoting, financing terror against Pakistan: Qureshi

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi Wednesday said India was actively planning, promoting and financing terrorist activities against Pakistan from across the borders, and urged the UN Security Council to demand that India halt its terrorist and subversive campaign against Pakistan.

Qureshi penned a letter to the UN Security Council and the UN Secretary General, to drawn their attention to the blatant measures taken by India on 5 August, 2019 to consolidate its occupation of the disputed territory, followed by additional unlawful steps to strengthen its colonial hold over IIOJ&K.

The Government of Pakistan, said the foreign minister, is absolutely clear that we will continue to lend moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmiris. Qureshi spoke at a time when a 12-member delegation of the Independent Permanent Human Rights Commission (IPHRC) of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) will be visiting Islamabad and Azad Jammu and Kashmir.

Accordingly, insinuations or allegations questioning its sincerity are simply malicious. As for the international community, it must continue to exhort India to treat Kashmiris like human beings.

In his scathing remarks the foreign minister said, “On 5 August, 2019, India in a state of power drunkenness embarked upon a Hitlerian final solution for the IIOJ&K. Thus began intensification of the slow moving tsunami of Indian state terrorism”.

He pointed to India's quest for a permanent seat at the UNSC at a time when the resolutions of the UNSC cast aside and no tool of cruelty was deemed excessive by the world’s so-called largest democracy, when the Security Council has discussed the Jammu and Kashmir dispute thrice since August 2019.

“Two years on, the Kashmiris continue to languish in the largest concentration camp on the planet. On top of that, they are being held incommunicado. They do not have access to regular or even emergency medical facilities – a plight not shared even by the worst criminals,” he added.

The minister pointed to the plight of Kashmiris where even in COVID-19, which has generated unprecedented empathy in the human race, it has done nothing to bring even an iota of relief to the Kashmiris.

“But it gets worse: India is trying to eliminate Kashmiris altogether. Young men disappearing without a trace. New domicile rules and land laws have been thrust upon the Kashmiris to reengineer IIOJ&K’s demography. In its delusion of grandeur, India expected the world and more pertinently Pakistan, to acquiesce,” he said.

In his letter, the minister has drawn attention to the blatant measures taken by India on 5 August, 2019 to consolidate its occupation of the disputed territory, followed by additional unlawful steps to strengthen its colonial hold over IIOJ&K. These additional steps include illegal changes to the demographic structure and electoral boundaries in the occupied territory, aimed at further marginalisation of Kashmiri Muslims to suppress their demand for freedom from Indian occupation and repression.

The letter highlights that, in order to suppress the people in IIOJ&K, India has deployed 900,000 security personnel; enforced the most extended curfew and lockdowns; imprisoned the Kashmiri political leadership; illegally detained 15,000 Kashmiri youth; tortured and extra-judicially killed young boys; put down peaceful protests violently, including by the use of pellet guns; and imposed collective punishments by demolishing and burning entire neighbourhoods and villages.

Noting India’s active planning as well as promotion and financing of terrorist activities against Pakistan from across the borders, including the recent bombing in Lahore, the minister has urged the Security Council to demand that India halt its terrorist and subversive campaign against Pakistan.

Meanwhile, a 12-member delegation of the IPHRC of the OIC will be visiting Islamabad and Azad Jammu & Kashmir from 4-9 August, as part of its mandate to monitor the deteriorating humanitarian and human rights situation in IIOJ&K, especially as a result of the spate of Indian illegal actions.

“The Commission was mandated by the 13th Islamic Summit and the 42nd Session of the OIC Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) to monitor the human rights violations in IIOJ&K and submit regular reports,” said the Foreign Office.

The IPHRC, at its 17th regular session held in March 2021, regretted the lack of response from the Indian government on a fact-finding visit to IIOJ&K. Accordingly, the Commission decided to undertake a visit to Azad Jammu and Kashmir for an impact assessment of continuing restrictions on Kashmiris and egregious human rights violations by the Indian occupation forces in IIOJ&K. During the visit, the IPHRC delegation will travel to Muzaffarabad and the Line of Control, and interact with Kashmiri leadership, refugees from IIOJ&K and victims of Indian atrocities.

Meanwhile, Qureshi said Pakistan wants to shift focus from geo-politics to geo-economics and wants peace with India but not at the expense of the Kashmiris.

“We hope Indian leadership will prefer statesmanship over populism. We hope we can, together, weaken the extremist narrative through a genuine pacific settlement of a festering dispute. Rest assured, the Imran Khan government will not be found wanting,” said Qureshi while speaking on the completion of two years since India’s illegal and unilateral actions in IIOJ&K accompanied by draconian measures.

Meanwhile, the minister called out India for refusing to allow five foreign journalists from travelling to Azad Kashmir, to cover an Azad Kashmir Assembly session.

Qureshi pointed out how the Indian government's decision was indicative that the incumbent "dictatorial regime" in India was shrinking space for independent journalism. "The denial of permission by India to 5 international journalists to travel to Pakistan, in which a visit to the Azad Kashmir Assembly was scheduled, is another damning indication of shrinking space for free speech and independent journalism under a dictatorial regime," he tweeted.