–Maleeha says Kashmiri indigenous struggle cannot be de-legitimised by blaming others
UNITED NATIONS: Reaffirming Pakistan’s resolute support to Kashmiri people’s struggle for freedom from the illegal Indian occupation, Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said Friday that a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir dispute was the “only pathway for lasting peace and stability in South Asia”.
“The people of Pakistan are resolute in their abiding commitment and steadfast political, diplomatic and moral support to the cause of the Kashmiri people,” Dr Lodhi, Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nation, said in an interview to APP on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of India’s invasion and subsequent occupation of Kashmir, known as “Black Day”. “Every day of brutal Indian occupation is a black day,” she said in a voice charged with emotion.
“The story of Kashmir has been an unremitting tale of pain and suffering, for generations of Kashmiri men, women and children,” the Pakistani envoy said, adding that “for the last seventy years, the people of Kashmir have waited for fulfillment of the solemn pledge made to them by several UN Security Council resolutions to exercise their right to self-determination”.
The Indian occupation had seen inflicted the worst form of state oppression, aimed to subdue the spirit of the people of Kashmir, where over 100,000 had been killed for the sake of freedom, she said. During the ongoing wave of protests, Indian occupation forces deliberately targeted Kashmiri protestors with pellet guns, leading to blindness among Kashmiris. “India has thus gained the infamy of committing the first “mass blinding” in human history,” Ambassador Lodhi said.
“The recent large-scale and well-orchestrated incidents of braid-chopping in occupied Kashmir is yet another sinister attempt by the Indian occupation to violate the dignity and sanctity of women in the occupied territory,” she alleged.
At the same time, she said, India continues to escalate the situation along the Line of Control, in order to deflect global attention from its atrocities in occupied Jammu and Kashmir. This year alone, India has committed over 1100 ceasefire violations, a three-fold increase from 2016.
“We have warned India to desist from making any strategic miscalculation that could threaten regional peace and stability. While Pakistan has exercised maximum restraint, we are fully capable of responding to any provocation in a timely and effective manner.”
Despite Indian tactics, the Pakistani envoy said, the Kashmiri people were firm in their conviction that their quest for freedom cannot be suppressed through the barrel of a gun; their right to self-determination cannot be denied by any false pretence of sham elections; their indigenous struggle cannot be de-legitimised by blaming others.
“A peaceful settlement of the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions is both an imperative of justice, as well as the only pathway to the lasting peace and stability in South Asia,” Ambassador Lodhi added.