India’s talk of IIOJK’s ‘inclusive development’ farcical: FO Spox

Guided tour to IIOJK, meeting with hand-picked people a smokescreen: FO

ISLAMABAD, Feb 20 (APP): Foreign Office Spokesperson rejecting the remarks of Indian External Affairs Ministry regarding the recent visit of Delhi-based diplomats to Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) said India could not even feign ‘normalcy’ with continuing military siege and restrictions.

“The talk of ‘inclusive development’ while hundreds of thousands of Kashmiris are being deprived of basic rights and economic opportunities is farcical,” Spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri said in response to media queries.

The FO spokesperson said, “The people’s rights to assembly, free movement, freedom of expression, and even to the safety of life and property are routinely violated in the IIOJK with impunity.”

“The so-called ‘development’ narrative is also an attempt to mislead the international community,” he said.

He stressed that said no sham electoral exercise in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) could substitute the UN Security Council-mandated plebiscite.

Such “guided tours” to the occupied territory and meetings with hand-picked people are designed to create a smoke-screen to divert attention from the egregious human rights violations in IIOJK and India’s illegal measures to change the demographic structure of the occupied territory, he added.

The FO spokesperson said the statement by UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues and Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion and belief on the concluding day of this visit had rightly highlighted the Indian attempts to “alter the demographics of the region and undermine the minorities’ ability to exercise effectively their human rights”.

He emphasized that it meant to obfuscate the machinations to further disempower and disenfranchise the Kashmiri people who were being reduced to a minority in their own land through the ongoing demographic restructuring in violation of relevant UNSC resolutions and the international law, including the 4th Geneva Convention.

“Pakistan reiterates its call to the international community to urge India to allow the Kashmiris to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination as enshrined in the relevant UN Security Council resolutions,” he said.

India's talk of IIOJK's 'inclusive development' farcical: FO Spox

By Shumaila Andleeb

Shumaila Andleeb; Senior Reporter at Associated Press of Pakistan; covering the beats of President, Prime Minister, Foreign Office, and Special Assignments.

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