At UN, Pakistan highlights denial of Kashmiri, Palestinian peoples’ right to self-determination

United Nations: Pakistan has told a UN panel that while most people under colonial rule have been able to exercise their rights to self-determination, the people of Palestine and Kashmir so far remain denied of that inalienable right.

Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ambassador Munir Akram, speaking in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, said that UN Security Council resolutions decided that the Kashmiri people will decide their status through a plebiscite, but India has thwarted every attempt through “force and fraud.”

Munir Akram, who was speaking in a debate on the right to self-determination, said that right was a “core principle” enshrined in the UN Charter and other covenants.

In August 2019, the Pakistani envoy said, India illegally annexed occupied Jammu and Kashmir in what India’s Hindu extremist leaders ominously called the “Final Solution”. During the past four years, he said, India has resorted to a campaign of “gross and systematic” violations of human rights in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, which amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity and genocide.

Despite concerns voiced by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and other mechanisms, he said, India has blocked visits to the territory, enjoying impunity “due to the protection offered by some major powers.”

“Indeed, like Israel, India has resorted not only to intensified oppression of the Kashmiris but also a belligerent posture against all those who call upon it to halt its crimes, especially Pakistan” Munir Akram said.

”India’s leaders, including its Defence Minister, have repeatedly threatened Pakistan with aggression across the Line of Control in Kashmir.

“Today, while the world watches, Israel is engaged in an indiscriminate genocidal campaign of bombardment of the unfortunate Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, as well as in the West Bank,” he added.

Following Ambassador Akram’s pointed words about Kashmir, an Indian delegate reacted by claiming that the disputed state was its integral part and would remain so.

In reply, a Pakistani delegate asserted that Jammu and Kashmir was not an integral part of India; the question of its accession to India or Pakistan would be decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite.