Pakistan to Help People of Kashmir Get Freedom from India

Imran Khan said that Pakistan would like to have good relations with India if India is ready to resolve the Kashmir issue which has been hanging fire for decades.

By Rakesh Raman

After the new Prime Minister (PM) Imran Khan’s promise to help the people of troubled Kashmir, today foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi reiterated Pakistan’s commitment to help the people of occupied Kashmir.

According to a Pakistan government communique, Qureshi has affirmed Pakistan’s full moral, diplomatic, and political support to the people of occupied Kashmir in their legitimate struggle to attain their inalienable right to self-determination (freedom).

A few days ago, Imran Khan had said that Pakistan would like to have good relations with India if India is ready to resolve the Kashmir issue which has been hanging fire for decades.

He blamed India for human rights violation in Kashmir which is a disputed territory between India and Pakistan. “Kashmir remains our biggest contention. The human rights violations are happening for over 30 years and the people of Kashmir have suffered massively,” Imran Khan’s party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) had tweeted on his behalf.

A new report by the UN Human Rights Office also suggests that there is an urgent need to address past and ongoing human rights violations and abuses and deliver justice for all people in Kashmir, who for seven decades have suffered a conflict that has claimed or ruined numerous lives.

Recently, a veteran Congress leader Saifuddin Soz suggested that Kashmiris will “prefer to be independent” if they are given a choice to express their free will.

Soz endorsed former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s assessment over a decade ago that Kashmiris will prefer freedom instead of living as citizens of India. He also criticized Indian government for diluting Kashmir’s autonomy that was enshrined in Article 370 of the Constitution of India.

Meanwhile, the UN has demanded an unconditional access to Kashmir to record the extent of human rights violations in the troubled state. Similarly, irked by extreme human rights violations in Kashmir, a British Parliamentary Group has decided to release a report on this issue.

Chris Leslie MP, Chairperson All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Kashmir, chaired the meeting a few days ago to discuss the state of unrest in Kashmir.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has affirmed Pakistan’s full moral, diplomatic and political support to the people of occupied Kashmir in their legitimate struggle to attain their inalienable right to self-determination. pic.twitter.com/flg5SCxdX2

— Govt of Pakistan (@pid_gov) September 4, 2018

Imran Khan added that the leadership of Pakistan and India now need to come to the table to resolve this issue and end the blame games.

“We are stuck at square one. If India comes and takes one step towards us, we will take two steps toward them. Right now it is one sided where India is constantly just blaming us,” Imran Khan complained.

Kashmir has always been a conflict area between India and Pakistan since 1947 when both these countries got freedom from the British rule. In order to stake their claims over Kashmir, India and Pakistan have fought two bloody wars in 1965 and 1971, besides incessant skirmishes between the rival armies.

By Rakesh Raman, who is a government’s National award-winning journalist and social activist. He had been associated with the United Nations (UN) through United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) as a digital media expert. He is the founder of a humanitarian organization RMN Foundation which is working in diverse areas to help the disadvantaged and distressed people in the society.