Pakistan hits back at Modi for claiming to have ‘resolved’ Kashmir dispute

Published October 11, 2022
In this file photo, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is see at a meeting in Osaka. — AFP/File
In this file photo, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi is see at a meeting in Osaka. — AFP/File

Pakistan on Tuesday “categorically rejected” the remarks made by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about India-occupied Jammu & Kashmir during a public rally in Gujarat, saying his narrative was not only false and misleading but also reflected “how oblivious the Indian leadership has become of the ground realities in IIOJK”.

Modi, at a rally in Gujarat on Monday, claimed that he had somehow “resolved the Kashmir issue”.

“As I am following the footsteps of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel (former Indian Congress leader), I have values of the land of Sardar and that was the reason I resolved the problem of Kashmir and paid true tributes to Sardar Patel,” Modi was quoted as saying by the Indian media.

Reacting to his remarks, the Foreign Office called out the Indian leader for making “delusional statements about having resolved the dispute unilaterally, the Indian leadership must deliver on their commitments to the Kashmiris”.

It said that Jammu and Kashmir was an internationally recognised dispute, the resolution of which had been on the agenda of the United Nations since 1948.

“Despite clear UN resolutions that prescribe a free and impartial plebiscite for the final disposition of the dispute, India has not only illegally occupied the territory but is also guilty of egregious human rights violations employing over 900,000 brutal occupation force,” the FO statement added.

It added that the fact remained that the people of IIOJK continued to brave India’s reprehensible occupation which it sought to perpetuate through malicious demographic changes and strong-arm tactics.

The craftily staged visits of the Indian leadership to the occupied territory and choreographed launches of so-called development projects in a bid to create a façade of ‘normalcy’ will neither dampen the spirit of the Kashmiris struggling to break free from the illegal Indian occupation nor would it deceive the world into believing India’s deception, the FO said.

“Pakistan has consistently called upon the international community to assume its role and responsibility with regards to IIOJK and the ongoing Indian atrocities in the occupied territory.”

The FO noted that India must also be held responsible for its “nefarious scheme of altering the demography of IIOJK”, as well as for its brutal repression of the innocent Kashmiris.

“Pakistan reiterates its call on human rights and humanitarian organizations to condemn India’s state terrorism in IIOJK and demand an immediate reversal of the Indian government’s illegal and unilateral actions of 5 August 2019,” the statement added.

The Foreign Office reiterated that the only solution to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute lay in ensuring that the Kashmiris were allowed to exercise their right of self-determination through the democratic method of holding a UN-mandated free and impartial plebiscite as espoused in the relevant UNSC resolutions and as per the wishes of the Kashmiri people.

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