India flouting international law, norms of civility: Asif

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  • Foreign minister says moral, political and diplomatic support for Kashmiri people to continue

ISLAMABAD: Foreign Affairs Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif has said that hostile Indian forces, flouting all conventions of international law and civility, had entered the peaceful land of Jammu Kashmir on the fateful day of October 27 in 1947 and occupied it against the wishes of its people at the time of the partition of the Indian subcontinent.

India only compounded its crimes by its continuous disregard for the basic human rights of the Kashmiri people and refusal to implement United Nations Security Council resolutions which acknowledged the right to self-determination for the Kashmiri people, he said in his message on the ‘black day’ of Kashmiris.

Over the last 69 years, Kashmiris have been killed and maimed, their women molested and dishonored, their children orphaned and left without family, all because India has tried in vain to force the local population to accept a false rule that the Kashmiris simply refuse to accept, a rule that is submerged in cruelty, inhumanity and suppression, the minister said.

Asif said that the indifference of the international community to the plight of the Kashmiri people does little to augment the confidence of the people of Pakistan in the basic humanity of mankind as well as the impartiality of institutions like the United Nations. “The day we accept that there is no such thing as international law, moral outrage or sanction for crimes against humanity would be a sad day indeed.

“The day we accept the precedent that a nation can openly oppress a people without universal condemnation for doing so, we set a dangerous precedent that is not in the interest of any of us,” he said. “I urge the international community as well as the United Nations to shake off the stupor and to deliver on its promises to the Kashmiri people through the implementation of the numerous resolutions acknowledging their right to self-determination,” he said.

“We express solidarity with our Kashmiri brethren who continue to suffer today at the hands of a brutal occupation. We will continue to extend to them our unflinching moral, political and diplomatic support in their just struggle for the right to self-determination,” he said. “Our support will continue till the realisation of the cherished dream for freedom of Kashmiris from Indian occupation,” he remarked.