Fai urges new UNGA president to help resolve Kashmir dispute

Fai urges new UNGA president to help resolve Kashmir dispute

NEW YORK, Jun 18 (APP):A prominent Kashmiri leader has congratulated Turkey’s top diplomat Volkan Bozkir on his election as president of the UN General Assembly’s 75th session, with an appeal that he mediate between India and Pakistan to resolve
the Kashmir dispute on the basis of the world body’s resolutions.

“If the people of Indian occupied Kashmir had the freedom to express their sentiments, you would no doubt have heard their loud rejoicing at the fact that a distinguished representative of brother country, Turkey, is presiding this year over the parliament of nations,” Ghulam Nabi Fai, secretary-general of the Washington-based World Kashmir Awareness Forum, said in a letter to Ambassador Bozkir.
Highlighting the main elements of the UN resolutions, he said that the people of Kashmir were baffled that the Security Council, while strictly enforcing its resolutions of in other situations, it has not done so in the case of Kashmir which is larger and more populous than scores of UN member states.
“More than 100,000 people have been killed by Indian armed forces since January 1989; numerous houses burned and bulldozed; all the inhabitants of the capital city of Srinagar and adjacent villages and towns have come out to the streets to protest against the continuation of Indian occupation and more recently against the enactment of ‘Domicile Certificate (Procedure) Rules 2020,’ which is designed to change the demography of the state, when the world’s attention is focused on the worst public health and economic crises of our times because of COVID-19,” Fai said in his letter released to the press on Thursday.

“We must mention here that, by no stretch of the imagination, can the situation in Kashmir be treated as India’s internal matter, as India alleges. Kashmir is recognized as disputed territory under international law and the United Nations bears the responsibility of preventing the massive violations of human rights that are being committed by the Indian occupation regime.

“The movement in Kashmir is not secessionist movement, because Kashmir cannot secede from a country it never acceded to in the first place. Nor is the Kashmir dispute a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan; it involves not an undemarcated boundary between the two states of India and Pakistan but the life and future of 23.5 million people of the princely State of Jammu & Kashmir.”

Fai added, “We trust that you as the President of General Assembly will bring your immense influence to bear on initiating a peace process, which will lead to a speedy, just, and honourable settlement of the dispute and restore their inalienable rights to the people of Jammu & Kashmir.”

APP Services