UNITED NATIONS: Marking Kashmir Solidarity Day, Ambassador Munir Akram said he was confident that the struggle of the people of the disputed region would triumph in achieving self-determination and freedom from Indian occupation.
“Kashmir is an inalienable part of the body and soul of Pakistan,” Akram, Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, said in a message to the global community released in New York on Saturday.
“The people of Pakistan have always stood resolutely with their Kashmir brethren against Indian oppression and aggression. They will continue to do so.”
The dispute, he said, was the unfinished agenda of self-determination in the subcontinent. In 1948, the UN Security Council resolutions declared that the final disposition of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir would be made in accordance with the will of its people expressed through a free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the body.
“Prime Minister Imran Khan’s strong advocacy of the rights of Kashmiris has revived global recognition of India’s grave and human rights violations in occupied Jammu and Kashmir,” Ambassador Akram said, adding it had made the world aware that a just resolution of the dispute was essential for durable peace and security in South Asia.
Secretary General António Guterres has reaffirmed the UN’s position on Jammu and Kashmir is based on its charter and the resolutions of the Security Council, he noted.
During the last two years, the Security Council has met three times to consider the situation in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, it was pointed out.
The General Assembly president, the High Commissioner for Human Rights, and other high-ranking UN rights experts, special rapporteurs, and human rights organisations had on numerous occasions expressed grave concern over India’s massive atrocities and crimes in occupied Kashmir.
The ambassador said the mission of Pakistan in New York would continue to utilise every opportunity to advocate and promote the just Kashmiri struggle for self-determination and to expose India’s oppression and naked occupation of Jammu and Kashmir.
