JK News Today Commentary
Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi was his fiery best at the UNHRC meet in Geneva on Tuesday when he exhorted the world to wake up to the tragedies in the Indian part of Jammu and Kashmir . He had a point , but the only problem with that was that he was presenting half truths as truths. And, that was understood by the global forum as it heard him speak making a case for the censuring of India for what was “ happening in Kashmir.”
There absolutely is no denying the fact that the Kashmir Valley has witnessed an extraordinary situation , and somewhat extraordinary measures that did cause some difficulties, at times, acute , and on other occasions, just the kind of which they had experienced in 2008, 2010 and 2016 – the calendar years when stone throwers took to streets and disrupted the normal life.
The issue this time , as it has come to the attention of the world, is that Jammu and Kashmir , the state divided between India and Pakistan since 1947 following the tribesmen’s invasion , duly instigated and sponsored by Pakistan , and the subsequent Nehruvian blunder of referring the matter to the United Nations, found its autonomous status revoked on August 5 . The move approved by the Parliament with a thumping majority in the full view of the viewers of the TV channels all across the world , also saw another constitutional provision 35 A that granted special rights to land and property to the permanent residents of the state was quashed , as it was extremely discriminatory in nature.
The residents of J&K could but property , own assets all across India, but the Indian citizens had no access to such rights in J&K. There was something more that did not get the international attention that it deserved . The refugees who had come from , what is now Pakistan , hounded by the violent mobs , in 1947, were not given the citizenship rights in J&K – they had no access to voting in the Assembly, panchayat , local bodies’ polls, nor they had any right o secure jobs and their children could not be enrolled in the local schools . In any nation, where the refugees stay for more than 5 or seven years , gain citizenship. They were not foreigners, but the Indian citizens like all other refugees who had come from Pakistani side and settled in the country , but they were treated as non-existent human beings in the state .
Qureshi made a powerful speech by his own reckoning , though the ultimate truth of the : Indian state Jammu and Kashmir” could not escape his narrative . Now, what would happen to him when he returns to Pakistan can be anyone’s guess , and he may have to speak for his own human rights in Pakistan . That being that.
Pakistan is right that Kashmir is facing a situation . But when it comes to fixing responsibility , it forgets that it played a vicious role in creating unbearable situations that had no parallels – it violated the spirit of all bilateral agreements between India and Pakistan, including Shimla pact of July 1972 where the two countries were to address all the “ outstanding issues.” The word “ Kashmir dispute” that it Islamabad keeps on referring time and again, rather incessantly is not in the pact at all.
Pakistan launched a proxy war, misled the Kashmiri youth, showed them the “ dream” of “ azadi”, knowing well that all this was a delusion . But still it indulged in the double-speak and that, too, with arms . It made Pakistan occupied Kashmir a swathe of terrorists’ training camps of all hues. The innocent people of PoK were coerced and their dignity of all sorts was violated by the terrorists who were made to assemble there from Pakistani part of Punjab North West Frontier Province ( now Khyber Pakthunawa).
The rejoicing over the terror attacks in Kashmir and other parts of India became an oral syllabi in Pakistan .This was done to legitimize terrorism . It has come to such a pass that even the OIC and other countries that were once supportive of Pakistan saw its real colours and distanced from it all the world for a, including the UNHRC, where it could not assemble even 24 member-states to support it on anti-India resolution.
It would be better for Pakistan to look into its own record of instigating , inciting and intimidating people of Kashmir that took away their innocence and brought an unwelcome profile of gun men, stone throwers and suicide bombers . No state would like the acts of terrorism to be enacted on its soil, so the restrictions were put in place. Now, it is for Pakistan’s thinkers and the political leadership to understand that what harm have they done to Kashmir and why they are standing alone . Terrorism is unacceptable and promoters of terrorism cannot and should not talk of human rights at all . They are the perpetrators and they cannot blame the victimhood of Kashmiris on others. In simple words, India has protected their rights by the measures it undertook, and Pakistan is desperately trying to perpetuate the human rights violations of Kashmir. There is no bigger truth than this.
