United Nations, Oct 10 (IANS) India has demanded that Pakistan stop the military’s human rights violations in the part of Kashmir it illegally occupies, where the people have risen in revolt against it.
“In the last few months, the Pakistani armed forces and their proxies have killed dozens of innocent civilians who were agitating for their basic rights and freedoms and basic necessities”, BJP MP Mahima Kumari Mewar said here on Friday.
“We call upon Pakistan to stop the grave and ongoing human rights violations in the areas illegally occupied by it, where the population is in open revolt against Pakistan, its military occupation, repression, brutality, and illegal exploitation of resources”, she said at the General Assembly’s Fourth Committee that deals with decolonisation.
She delivered the tough message, exercising the right of reply to Pakistan’s Acting Permanent Representative Usman Jadoon’s attempt to draw Kashmir into the debate.
“A country like Pakistan, with an established record of military dictatorship, sham elections, incarceration of popular elected leaders, religious extremism, and sponsoring terrorism as an instrument of state policy, should, in future, refrain from preaching homilies of this sort at this platform”, Mewar said.
“Jammu and Kashmir is and always remains an integral and inalienable part of India”, she declared.
More than 90 people have been killed by Islamabad’s security forces, which brutally put down Kashmiris’ protests that began against Pakistan sending outsiders there to manipulate the elections.
The people’s anger over the exploitation of its natural resources, the worsening living conditions, and the rising prices boiled over and a civil society coalition, Jammu Kashmir Joint Awami Action Committee (JAAC), has led the broader protests.
Mewar represents Rajasthan’s Rajsamand constituency in the Lok Sabha and is among the MPs in India’s delegation to the General Assembly.
Earlier, delivering India’s statement at the committee, she reaffirmed that India would work tirelessly to achieve the goal of decolonisation.
“The fight against colonisation has been arduous” and although more than 80 countries have been able to break free of the shackles of colonialism, the decolonisation “process, however, remains unfinished”, she said.
Seventeen non-self-governing territories remain on the agenda of the Fourth Committee, and a pragmatic approach will lead to their decolonisation and the fulfilment of the legitimate wishes of the people there, she said.
The UN’s list of the non-self-governing territories includes the Falkland Islands or Malvinas, which are claimed by Argentina, over which there were heated exchanges between Britain, which holds them, and Argentina and its supporters.
–IANS
al/rs
