Ambassador Janjua urges int'l community to play its role over IIOJK

The Ambassador highlighted the Indian govt’s additional steps to consolidate its illegal occupation

ISLAMABAD (APP) – Pakistan’s Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg and European Union Zaheer A Janjua has urged the international community to play its role and impress upon India to immediately lift the military siege, rescind the illegal and unilateral actions of August 5, 2019 over the IIOJK and comply with the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolutions.

He further called for end to gross human rights violations and allow access to international human rights and humanitarian organizations, observers and international media to the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).

The ambassador, in a special video message on the first anniversary of India’s military siege of the IIOJK, reiterated Pakistan’s continuous political, diplomatic and moral support to the people of Jammu and Kashmir for achieving their right to self-determination guaranteed to them by the UNSC.

“The international community has an urgent responsibility to address the situation. The travesty of justice and international law must, henceforth, come to an end,” a press release on Wednesday quoted him as saying.

He noted that it had been one year since the Indian government changed the special status of IIOJK in complete violation of international law and the UNSC resolutions.

Ambassador Janjua highlighted the Indian government’s additional steps to consolidate its illegal occupation by introducing a series of new domicile regulations to change the demographic structure of the illegally occupied territory.

He emphasized that the current Indian leadership was bent upon perpetuating its illegal occupation by brutally crushing the quest of the Kashmiri people for their fundamental rights, especially the right to self-determination, enshrined in the relevant UNSC resolutions.

He said by taking advantage of the world community’s preoccupation with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian forces further intensified their inhumane crackdown and military siege of the held territory.

Mass extra-judicial killings in fake encounters, burning and looting of Kashmiris’ houses to inflict collective punishment on communities, indiscriminate use of pellet guns and live ammunition against unarmed peaceful protestors, he said, remained the norm as thousands of Kashmiris, including political leadership, were under arbitrary detention and incarceration.

He underscored that the media had also been stifled with intimidation, detention and harassment. However, the gross human rights violations in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir had been repeatedly exposed by reports of the international media, human rights organizations and world parliaments, he maintained.

Ambassador Janjua referred to the two reports of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in June 2018 and July 2019, which extensively documented the Indian gross and systematic violations of human rights, which the UN Secretary General had termed the voice of UN.

He said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and multiple UN Special Procedure Mandate Holders had also expressed serious concerns on the human rights situation in the IIOJK. The UN Security Council also discussed the issue.

The ambassador said last year in September, the European Parliament held an open debate on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir in which a large number of MEPs condemned Indian actions and human rights violations and called upon India to lift the military siege.

Vice President of the European Parliament Dr. Fabio Massimo Castaldo, sent a letter, co-signed by other MEPs, to the President of the European Commission and High Representative on the precarious situation in the IIOJK, he maintained.

He further said that the Chair of the European Parliament’s Sub-Committee on Human Rights, MEP Maria Arena, also wrote a letter to the Indian home minister raising serious concerns on the situation of human rights in India.