MUZAFFARABAD: Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) Vice President Maryam Nawaz on Monday asserted that Nawaz Sharif would fight and win the case of Kashmir.

Addressing a public meeting in Forward Kahuta, district headquarters of Haveli, and standing at a place surrounded by the Line of Control on three sides, Ms Nawaz said she wanted to get her message across the divide to the martyred sons and their parents that their sacrifices would not go in vain.

“Maryam Nawaz promises that Nawaz Sharif and the people of Azad Kashmir will fight the case of the 100,000 Kashmiri martyrs,” she said.

She maintained that when Nawaz Sharif was the advocate of Kashmiris, he had fought the case of Burhan Wani Shaheed “like a lion” at the UN Security Council and added that Nawaz Sharif was courageous enough to have carried out six nuclear explosions in response to five by India.

The PML-N vice president regretted that the patriots were [being] dubbed traitors in Pakistan.

“You dubbed Nawaz Sharif a traitor notwithstanding the fact that he conducted six nuclear blasts,” she said, adding that, “there were too many factories in Pakistan to dub those who could not be beaten in the ring as traitors, thieves and dacoits.”

Ms Nawaz said she was glad to have spent 13 days in AJK which she considered her home.

“I am happy that I did not do a jalsa for any money making machine,” she said, in a reference to PTI’s billionaire candidate Sardar Tanveer Ilyas.

Taking a jibe at PM Khan, she said as compared to her “grand public meeting” he too had addressed a small crowd in Bagh at the invitation of his “brand new ATM”.

“Today you want to deprive Azad Kashmir of its flag by converting it into a province of Pakistan,” she said to the prime minister, claiming that a decision to steal the forthcoming elections had been made so as to install a puppet prime minister and subsequently divest the AJK people of their freedom, identity, flag and status.

She said the “successful foreign policy” of Imran Khan had led to stoppage of work on CPEC projects by China.

“The country that was making investments in Pakistan during the rule of Nawaz Sharif is now investigating the killings of its citizens,” she said while referring to the Dasu incident.

Published in Dawn, July 20th, 2021