UNITED NATIONS, Oct 12 (APP):Pakistan has called on the international community to implement the long-standing UN Security Council resolutions guaranteeing the right to self-determination for the Kashmiri people, saying those resolutions have no expiry date. Addressing the UN General Assembly's Fourth Committee deliberations on decolonization and special political affairs, Pakistan's Acting Permanent Representative, Ambassador Usman Jadoon, underscored the systemic denial of these core freedoms, framing the resolutions on the Jammu …
Pakistan urges UN Security Council to implement its resolutions on Kashmir for lasting peace
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 12 (APP):Pakistan has called on the international community to implement the long-standing UN Security Council resolutions guaranteeing the right to self-determination for the Kashmiri people, saying those resolutions have no expiry date.
Addressing the UN General Assembly’s Fourth Committee deliberations on decolonization and special political affairs, Pakistan’s Acting Permanent Representative, Ambassador Usman Jadoon, underscored the systemic denial of these core freedoms, framing the resolutions on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute as an essential obligation for global peace and stability.
The Pakistani envoy, who was speaking on ‘Implementation of the Declaration on Decolonization’, said while settler colonialism was an enduring reality in certain occupied territories, the promise of self-determination also remains unfulfilled for the peoples of Occupied Palestine and Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
Since independence, he said Pakistan had stood firmly with peoples struggling to determine their own future, pledging to continue its political, diplomatic and moral support for their legitimate struggle.
Ambassador Jadoon said Security Council resolutions provide for a free and impartial plebiscite under UN auspices, and were accepted by both India and Pakistan.
“Time does not extinguish these commitments,” he pointed out.
The Pakistani envoy also spotlighted ongoing concerns regarding intensifying restrictions on fundamental freedoms in occupied Kashmir, alongside deliberate legislative and administrative attempts to alter the demographic and political character of the region.
India’s illegal measures of 5 August 2019 and subsequent unilateral actions, he warned cannot alter Jammu and Kashmir’s internationally recognized disputed status.
“Domestic legislation and sham electoral exercises cannot substitute for self-determination.”
Ambassador Jadoon demanded India halt these violations, release detained political leaders and human rights defenders, reverse its unlawful measures imposed in the occupied territory since 5 August 2019, allow independent international human rights scrutiny, and implement UNSC resolutions to ensure that Kashmiri people realize their right to self-determination.
Pakistan, he said, seeks peaceful relations with all its neighbours, emphasizing that durable peace in South Asia requires a just settlement of Jammu and Kashmir in accordance with Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people. “The international community must actively advance this objective.”
On the Palestinian tragedy, the Pakistani envoy said despite the ceasefire, continuing violence, displacement and restrictions on assistance perpetuate the humanitarian catastrophe. Since October last year, he said, more than 1,400 have been killed.
“The ceasefire must be fully implemented; humanitarian assistance must flow safely, unimpeded and at scale, with UNRWA enabled to fulfill its mandate.”
Pakistan supports the US-proposed Gaza Peace Plan and implementation of UN Security Council resolution 2803.
Recovery of war-shattered Gaza must uphold Palestinian ownership and the enclave’s unity with the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, Ambassador Jadoon said.
“Forced displacement and demographic alteration must be rejected,” he said, stressing that illegal settlements, organized settler violence and land seizures threaten the two-State solution of the Israel-Palestine dispute. The E1 project would undermine Palestinian territorial contiguity and must stop, he said.
“Lasting peace requires an end to occupation and an independent, sovereign, viable and contiguous State of Palestine on the pre-1967 borders, with
Al-Quds Al-Sharif as its capital.”
Ambassador Jadoon’s sharp words in favour of Kashmiri people’s self-determination, drew a response from an Indian delegate, who accused Pakistan of abusing the forum.
Exercising her right of reply, Mahima Kumari Mewar, a member of Indian Parliament, claimed that Jammu and Kashmir is and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India, and commented on Pakistan’s internal matters.
Reacting to India’s “false” statement, Pakistani delegate Ansar Shah said, “Jammu and Kashmir is neither an ‘integral part’ of India nor its internal matter.”
“Repetition cannot rewrite history. Occupation cannot create sovereignty. And denial cannot erase an internationally-recognized dispute,” asserted Shah, a first secretary in the Pakistan Mission to the UN.
Highlighting that Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally-recognized dispute before the United Nations., he said numerous Security Council resolutions reaffirm the principle that the territory’s future will be decided by its people through exercise of their inalienable right to self-determination.
The Pakistani delegate rejected as “absurd” India’s repeated attempts to strike a comparison between Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
In Azad Jammu and Kashmir, he insisted, Kashmiris live freely and express themselves, adding, “They protest. They participate in political life. They raise their voices.”
“In Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, political voices are silenced, dissent is criminalized, thousands have faced detention, demographic changes are imposed and the fundamental right to self-determination remains denied,” Shah said.
“Rights exercised cannot be equated with rights denied.”
The real question is: Will India honour Security Council resolutions, will it honor article 25 of the UN charter and allow the promised free and impartial plebiscite under UN auspices, he asked.
