Pakistan rejects Indian offer of bilateral talks on Kashmir

• Adviser Sartaj says India has scuttled all opportunities for a meaningful dialogue

Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz on Tuesday said that India’s contention that Kashmir issue is, primarily, an issue of ‘cross-border terrorism,’ is a claim that no one in the world is prepared to accept today.

In a statement, he said that the Indian government has broken its own record of brutality in the Indian-held Kashmir (IHK), not only in target killing but also by indiscriminately killing over 100 young unarmed Kashmiri protesters.

The Indian forces have blinded hundreds of Kashmiris, including children, and injured over 16,000 protesters with live ammunition, pellet guns and gas shells. “That is why, The New York Times newspaper labelled the year 2016 as a “Year of dead eyes” in Kashmir,” he said while quoting a leading American daily.

“Nobody believes that thousands of young boys and girls, who have been agitating ceaselessly since July 2016 are terrorists,” Sartaj said. India cannot ignore the fact that the Kashmiri people are losing faith in Indian democracy since in the recent sham by-election in Srinagar on April 9, the voter turnout was only 7% and while during re-polling, it fell to 2%, the adviser pointed out.

He also said that the second by-election in Anantnag has been postponed to May 25 and India’s Election Commission has demanded thousands of additional troops to be able to conduct the poll. The OIC’s declaration adopted by the 13th Summit in Istanbul in April last, out-rightly rejected Indian attempts of equating the Kashmir freedom struggle with terrorism.

The discovery of over 7,000 unnamed and unmarked mass graves have proven through forensic analysis, undertaken by independent investigators, that those buried were Kashmiris belonging to the disputed state.

Political analysts and members of civil society from across the globe have concluded that the large-scale uprising, which is going on in the disputed state, involving mostly young unarmed Kashmiris confronting fully armed Indian forces, clearly shows that Kashmir was a burning issue requiring urgent international attention, he said.

The adviser said that Pakistan has always welcomed the statements and endeavours aimed at addressing the human rights issues in the disputed Kashmiri state and the resolution of the Jammu Kashmir issue.

Sartaj said that the recent offer of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to strengthen the dialogue process among the stakeholders for resolving the Kashmir issue and his call for a multilateral approach to settle the Jammu Kashmir issue with an immediate end to bloodshed in the disputed state must be welcomed.

In this context, he said the Indian counter proposal that it was ready for bilateral dialogue with Pakistan was no longer credible because in the past two decades India has scuttled all opportunities for a meaningful dialogue to resolve the Kashmir issue in accordance with the UN Security Council’s relevant resolutions on Kashmir.