The Chairman of Kashmir Institute of International Relations (KIIR), Altaf Hussain Wani has urged G20 countries not to allow the Indian government to use them as its ‘brand ambassadors’ to project its normalcy narrative without giving an iota of importance to the wishes and aspirations of the Kashmiri people.
Altaf Hussain Wani in a communiqué addressed to heads of G20 countries said that the Indian government’s controversial decision to hold the high-profile summit in the IIOJK was based on mala-fide intentions aimed at deflecting the world attention away from the Kashmir dispute.
“India’s present-day government, which in brazen violation of the UNSC resolutions had unilaterally and unlawfully changed the special status of Kashmir in 2019, has since then been remorselessly peddling lies to promote so-called normalcy narrative on Kashmir”, the communiqué said.
Referring to the individual trips of the Members of the European Parliament to Kashmir last year, the letter said, “EU parliamentarians’ individual visits were presented by the Indian government as official EU delegations”.
“Similarly, a trip of foreign envoys stationed at New Delhi to the disputed territory was arranged to keep the charade of normalcy alive”, he said, adding that nearly two-dozen diplomats, mostly from European and African countries, were invited for a visit to the region to give an impression that all is well in Kashmir and to ward off the growing calls for an independent probe into human rights violations in the region.
“The guided trip has been more or less a replica of the past visit wherein the delegates were taken on a brief tour of “Naya (new) Kashmir”, which was skillfully carved out from the war-torn city overnight and decorated as per the visitors’ contentment by removing temporarily the barricades, barbed-wires, and bunkers that one can normally see dotted all around the city”, the letter said.
Underling the Indian government’s long history of using falsehood as a state policy to hoodwink the global community, the KIIR chief in his letter mentioned that the Modi government’s decision to hold the G20 Summit in Kashmir has triggered genuine concerns/apprehensions that the government would yet again use the high-profile meeting as a tool to achieve its strategic objectives.
Urging the heads of G20 countries to take a holistic review of the situation, Wani expressed the optimism that the member states of the Group would not allow the Indian state to use them as its ‘brand ambassadors’ to project its so-called normalcy narrative on Kashmir and influence the Indian government to change the venue of the Summit given the territory’s disputed nature.
