- But the Opposition is kept out of IOK
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has promised to take up the matter of Kashmir with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi when they meet in Biarritz, where both are attending the G7 Summit. He made this commitment to Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in a telephone conversation on Saturday. However, Mr Guterres did not make any commitment when Mr Qureshi said that he should visit Indian Occupied Kashmir because of the gravity of the situation which could be gauged from the use by Indian occupation forces of shotguns and pellet guns on protesters who staged demonstrations in Srinagar after Friday prayers. This would be a positive development, but Mr Guterres pointed out the problem when he said that while the Kashmir issue should be solved according to the UN resolutions on the subject, only India was reluctant to bring the issue to the UN.
Another dimension of the problem was revealed when the Indian government prohibited Indian opposition leaders from going to Srinagar as they were about to leave. These were no wild-eyed radicals nor rights activists, but included no less a figure than Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi. Even though India claims to be the world’s largest democracy, the stopping of this attempt at a fact-finding mission is an indication of how seriously the Modi government takes the possibility of the people of Kashmir getting their voice out. The intense lock down that has been imposed in the Valley remains clamped there, with the oppressive curfew which has trapped the entire population inside their homes, irrespective of any need for medicine or any supplies, still in place for the 21st day running today.
While the plight of Kashmir seems to have increased rather than decreased with the Modi government’s change of its status, the international community does not seem ready to act as it should, and though Mr Guterres is willing to take some action, it is nearly not enough. Pakistan’s establishment may be doing as much as it can to convince world opinion that it must act decisively to end the agony of Kashmir and the threat to the entire world of nuclear war, but it seems that it will not be able to do enough. There is a need to focus on ending the fast-developing humanitarian crisis there.
