ISLAMABAD: Expressing concern over reports about India’s purported plans to trigger additional demographic changes in the occupied territory, Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has urged the UN to ensure full implementation of its resolutions on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute.
According to a statement issued by the Foreign Office on Wednesday, Mr Qureshi wrote a letter to the UN Security Council president and the UN secretary general, apprising them of Pakistan’s grave concern over reports that New Delhi may impose further illegal and unilateral measures in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, including division, bifurcation and additional demographic changes in the occupied territory.
The foreign minister also urged the Security Council to call upon India to end its campaign of repression in IIOJK and reverse all its illegal actions, including those initiated on and after Aug 5, 2019, and to cease and desist from imposing any additional unilateral changes in the occupied territory.
In his letter, Mr Qureshi has drawn the world body’s attention to India’s continued military siege of IIOJK, which has continued for over 22 months, to suppress Kashmiris’ legitimate demands through a massive campaign of repression, including gross and systematic violations of human rights.
Highlighting India’s design to undermine the exercise of the inalienable right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people by changing the demographic structure of IIOJK through the issuance of fake domicile certificates and other measures, the foreign minister has underscored that “all the unilateral and illegal actions taken by India in IIOJK since 1951, including the measures initiated on and after August 5, 2019, and any additional unilateral changes that India may introduce in the future, are violations of international law, including the Security Council resolutions and the 4th Geneva Convention, and ipso facto null and void”.
Stressing that the people of held Kashmir have vociferously rejected the illegal measures imposed by India, Mr Qureshi has called upon the Security Council to fulfil its responsibility to ensure full implementation of its resolutions.
FM’s visit to Turkey
Foreign Minister Qureshi will undertake an official visit to Turkey on Thursday (today) to participate in the Antalya Diplomacy Forum from June 17-20 at the invitation of his Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavusoglu.
Published in Dawn, June 17th, 2021
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