Pakistan hits back at India over Kashmir

At UN, Islamabad cites plebiscite breach, calls India's actions illegal

UNITED NATIONS:

Pakistan lashed out at India for backtracking from its obligations under the UN Security Council resolutions guaranteeing the right of self-determination to the people of Jammu and Kashmir, arguing that its settler-colonial project in the disputed territory also flagrantly violated international law.

"Jammu and Kashmir is not, and has never been, an integral part of India," Pakistani delegate Asif Khan told the UN General Assembly's Special Political and Decolonization Committee on Monday.

He was exercising his right of reply to the Indian delegate, N.K. Premachandran, for claiming that Kashmir was, and "will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India." Premachandran, who is an MP, also called Pakistan a "fountainhead of terror" and went on to comment on its internal matters.

Asif Khan, who is a minister at the Pakistan Mission to the UN, rejected the Indian allegation and branded India as "the world's largest producer of disinformation."

Kashmir, he said, is an internationally recognised disputed territory whose final status is to be determined through a free and impartial plebiscite under the UN auspices.

"Let me reiterate that the UN Declaration of 1960 decrees that 'all peoples' under alien subjugation have the right to self-determination," he said, adding that the right is also enshrined in the UN Charter.

For long, India has tried to sell a false narrative, branding the just struggle of the people of Jammu & Kashmir as terrorism," Asif Khan said.

India's intransigence in denying the Kashmiri people their fundamental rights, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, mass incarcerations, sexual violence, and demographic engineering are the real reasons for the 'indigenous' freedom movement.

While it masquerades as a victim, he said, the truth is that India is the principal sponsor of state terrorism in the region with a dubious distinction of extraterritorial assassinations. "It has financed and directed terrorist proxies such as TTP, BLA, and the Majeed Brigade, whose attacks have killed thousands of innocent civilians in Pakistan."

The Pakistani delegate said India's claim to be the world's largest democracy was "hollow."

"The ruling RSS-BJP ideology has institutionalized Islamophobia and turned persecution of minorities into state policy," Asif Khan said.