Kashmir (Jammu and Kashmir) unresolved, and under siege: UNSC urged to appoint Plebiscite Administrator for the resolution the Kashmir conflict.
In order to resolve the 74 year old Kashmir conflict, JKLF diplomatic Bureau urges UN to appoint an administrator to work towards a plebiscite in Jammu Kashmir state.
His Excellency Mr
Antonio Guterres
United Nations Secretary General
UN HQ 1st Avenue at 46th Street
New York, NY 10017 USA.
Date:
8 October 2021
Kashmir (Jammu and Kashmir) unresolved, and under
siege: UNSC urged to appoint Plebiscite Administrator for the resolution the
Kashmir conflict.
Excellency
just over twenty six months ago on 5 August 2019, the BJP/RSS led India
committed naked aggression against the internationally disputed state of Jammu and
Kashmir- generally referred to as Kashmir. It is sadly ironic that for the
month of August in 2021 India presided over the UNSC while exactly two years
earlier she annexed and bifurcated the State into two so called union
territories to be are ruled directly from New Delhi. With this illegal act of
annexation the Indian Government displayed an utter contempt, and arrogance
with blatant defiance of the UN and its resolutions which called for a plebiscite
to determine the status of the disputed State.
Excellency
two years on, the suffering inflicted on the defenceless people continues with greater
intensity, especially in the valley of Kashmir, the Chenab valley, and the
region of Pir Panjal. For the past two years India has turned the illegally re-occupied
Kashmir into a gigantic open prison with millions of people under siege by 900,000
Indian soldiers.
Freedom
of movement within and out of the occupied territory is curtailed for
Kashmiris. In order to obtain Indian passport, a Kashmiri is expected to have
lived a secluded and monastic existence. And throughout his/her life is
expected, not have uttered a word or participated in an activity such as a
protest meeting about any issue of social, political, and economic aspects of
Kashmir; it is only then that he/she would be considered a model citizen to
qualify for the ‘privilege’ to obtain an Indian passport for travel.
This
then is India of 2021 in Kashmir, the so called largest democracy in the world,
which is being allowed by the UNSC to get away with terrorising an entire
nation, and depriving it of its internationally recognised right to self-determination
along and all other human rights. And yet Prime Minister Modi of India in his
address to the 76 UN General Assembly session last month, eulogised
his country as the “mother of democracy.”
In
reality however, the RSS supported BJP Prime Minister of India has no respect
for democracy in Kashmir and democratic rights of the people of Kashmir. His
rise to political power during the past two decades, first as the Chief
Minister of Gujrat and since 2014 as Prime Minister of India, can only be
attributed to extremist majoritarian politics, underpinned by the supremacist
religious Hindutva ideology. Kashmir is being used by the BJP/RSS Modi
Government as a laboratory to infuse and galvanise its extremist majoritarian
political base in India for electoral advantage.
Excellency
the UNSC is the Apex law making body in the world which has the power to
enforce the UN Charter and its resolutions. It is a grievous injustice
inflicted on the people of Kashmir that the UN SC has utterly failed to enforce
the UN Charter and its resolutions to assert, and defend the inherent,
inalienable unfettered sovereign right of 22 million Kashmiris. As the
collective conscience of the world, UN has the obligations and authority, which
your Excellency has a duty to exercise, to protect and assert the rights of Kashmiris,
whose consent has been thwarted from being exercised on the status of their
homeland for more than seven decades. We
demand that the UNSC appoints a Plebiscite Administrator for the resolution of
the Kashmir issue. We urge your Excellency to engage with India and Pakistan to
ensure that both countries facilitate the UN Plebiscite administrator.
Kashmiri
leadership committed to a peaceful political resolution of the dispute is
thrown into jails, with charges of ‘sedition’ that are nothing other than the
actions of a colonial power. Kashmiris are ruled today on both sides of the
1949 CfL without consent and their democratic right to dissent has been taken away.
The naked aggression, suppression and militarised violence in Kashmir by India
is unprecedented, and a clear negation of India’s obligations and commitments
made to the international community and the people of Kashmir. The oppression
by Indian state must stop and Kashmiri leadership must be released from prisons
as well as from under house arrest.
Excellency
the Modi Government has banned political parties like the Jammu Kashmir
Liberation Front-JKLF- and the Jamat-e-Islami. Political leaders committed to a
peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue are illegally incarcerated with
trumped up charges. The Chairman of the JKLF Mr Yasin Malik for example is
accused of supporting militancy, which he and his party gave up more than twenty
five years ago to embark upon a political, and peaceful revolutionary struggle
for self-determination. Mr Yasin Malik seeks active and constructive
participation of India and Pakistan along with Kashmiris under auspices of the
UN for an equitable resolution of the issue and the conflict.
The
history of Kashmir issue is full of betrayals, and broken pledges by India in
particular, and indifference to, and abandonment of Kashmiris’ basic rights by
the big powers. One such solemn Indian pledge was made by Gopalswami Ayyangar
at the 227th meeting of the UNSC on 15 January 1948 when he stated the
following: “whether she should withdraw from her accession to India, and either accede
to Pakistan or remain independent with a right to claim admission as a member
of the United Nations- all this we have recognised to be a matter for
unfettered decision by the people of Kashmir after normal life is restored to
them.”
On
2 January 1952 Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime minister of independent
India, reiterated India’s policy on Kashmir in a statement in the Amrita Bazar
Patrika of Calcutta by stating that: “Kashmir is not the property of India or
Pakistan. It belongs to the Kashmiri people. When Kashmir acceded to India, we
made it clear to the leaders of the Kashmiri people that we would ultimately
abide by the verdict of their plebiscite. If they tell us to walk out, I would
have no hesitation in quitting Kashmir.” He continued by affirming that: “We have taken
the issue to the United Nations and given our word of honour for a peaceful
solution. As a great nation, we cannot go back on it. We have left the final
solution to the people of Kashmir and we are determined to abide by their
decision.”
Excellency it appears
that Gopalswami Ayyangar’s words at the 15 January 1948 UNSC meeting, and those
of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s above, were words of a great deception by a UN
member state described as a great nation’s “word of honour” by Pandit Nehru. For its credibility the UNSC must call out India’s
deception and betrayal over Kashmir. As a non-permanent member of the UNSC, India’s
presiding over the UNSC for the month of August 2021 reflected the real meaning
of the phrase ‘poacher turned game keeper!’ The recommendations made in the
two UNHCHR reports of June 2018 and July
2019 on the human rights situation in Kashmir still await appropriate action
by the UN as it has not been allowed a visit by either India or Pakistan in the
divided State. Clearly the UN once again has failed to protect the basic rights
and interests of the people of Kashmir as the reports address human rights issues
and violations on both sides of the CfL. The
only ray of comfort in the past two years, is the cessation of hostilities on
25 February 2021 between armies of India and Pakistan deployed eye-ball to
eye-ball across the five hundred miles long
CfL since 1947. Both countries have strictly controlled movement across the
de facto border for hundreds of thousands of separated families, and Kashmiris
in general to move across the CfL freely which Kashmiris consider as their
fundamental right.
Based
on policies of India and Pakistan it is widely suspected by Kashmiris that the
cessation of hostilities across the CfL could well be a prelude to disregard
the plebiscite, and turn the CfL into a formal border over the heads of 22
million citizens of the forcibly divided State. If that were the intentions of
India and Pakistan to settle the issue with permanent division of Kashmir, such
an outcome without a doubt will not be welcomed by the Kashmiris.
Instead
of resolving the long standing issue with a free, fair, transparent and
democratic plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations, formalising
division and annexation of Kashmir by either one or both of the countries, will
not constitute a democratic solution as such an enforced solution would be
against the inherent and inalienable unfeterred right of the Kashmiris to self-determination; and would
also contravene the UN’s mandate entrusted to India and Pakistan under UNSC
resolutions.
Excellency,
India has blatantly reneged on her solemn pledges and commitments made with
Kashmiris, and the United Nations, and yet she demands a permanent seat on the
UNSC to become a custodian of the organisation’s values despite defying the UN
over Kashmir. We very much hope however, that Pakistan will not move away from
its UN mandated role on the Kashmir issue, and will not follow India by
integrating territories of the state into Pakistan, which it controls directly
as in the Gilgit Baltistan-GB and indirectly in Azad Jammu and Kashmir-AJK.
Resolution
of the Kashmir issue and the conflict, without a doubt, is central to unlocking
the full human potential of 1.5 billion inhabitants of South Asia. Kashmiris
desire peace, in fact Kashmiris demand peace with justice and dignity, so that
as a free people Kashmiris can also prosper and contribute by unleashing the
boundless energy coupled with the spirit to climb new heights, which is
embedded in the culture of enterprise among the diverse people of Kashmir. Being
sandwiched between two nuclear powers who have not overcome hostility against
each other since their independence from the United Kingdom in 1947, has
inevitably inhibited our progress, prosperity and spirit of innovation and
achievement.
Excellency
the policies of successive Indian governments have always been hostile to
Kashmir’s identity, history and the desire to be free. In the BJP/RSS led government
however, the level of political, ideological and authoritarian venom and
vindictiveness towards Kashmir, and its free spirit, and the struggle for
self-determination, has been unprecedented. Since coming to power in 2014 the
Modi led BJP/RSS Government has taken away everything which defines the
historic, social and cultural identity of the State of Jammu and Kashmir. It
continues to dismantle the institutions and laws of the State that have defined
its collective and individual character and made the diverse State as a beacon
of communal harmony and affirmation and respect across faiths and diverse
communities of the State within South Asia.
Modi
Government’s policy of “all out” submission of Kashmiris’ legitimate resistance
has left no political space in Kashmir. Prime Minister Modi is more interested
in colonial settler project in Kashmir to reduce the Muslim majority into an
inconsequential minority by the time his party goes into the 2024 Indian
General Election. He does not appear to worry about the economic woes of the
Kashmiris, whose economic situation has not improved at all since 2014. He is
also not interested in the communal cleavage his policies are creating in
Kashmir as this suits his political and ideological majoritarian Hindutva agenda
for India even though it is having a grave impact on the diverse socio-
cultural and political fabric of Kashmir.
Excellency
we strongly urge you to defend and assert the rights and aspirations of the people
of Kashmir, and urge you to call upon the leaders of India and Pakistan for
their co-operation with your Excellency and the Plebiscite Administrator, for a
just, equitable and lasting peaceful resolution of the more than seven decades
old Kashmir conflict which is, and has been, a threat to peace, and prosperity
of the South Asian region, and the world. We urge your Excellency to call upon
the Indian government to immediately release all political prisoners including
Mr Yasin Malik, Mr Shabir Shah, Ms Aasiya Andrabi and many others from
detention. These Kashmiri leaders are part of the solution, and must be engaged
with for a peaceful and lasting resolution of the conflict, which will unleash
a new era of peace, and prosperity for the entire South Asian region and
beyond.
Sincerely,
Zafar Khan
Chairman-
Diplomatic Bureau of Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front-JKLF
International
Secretariat 119-123 Cannon Street Road North Basement
London E1 2 LX
Email: zafargk@aol.com
Central Information Office-CIO:
B-144 Satellite Town Murree Road
Rawalpindi Pakistan.
Email: jklf1977@gmail.com
Copied
to: Her Excellency Ms Michelle Bachelete UN
High Commissioner on Human Rights
