Pakistan succeeds in bringing human rights situation in IOK officially on EU Forum

BRUSSELS: Pakistan succeeded in bringing human rights situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir officially on EU Forum.

The European (EU) parliament members called upon India to stop gross human rights (HR) violations in Indian Occupied Kashmir and allow the people to exercise their right to self-determination according to the United Nations Resolutions.

European Union’s Sub Committee on Human Rights hosted an official exchange of views on situation of human rights in IOK at the European Parliament in Brussels.

This was for the first time after 2007 that the issue of Kashmir was discussed publically at an official EU forum.

An overwhelming majority of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) attending this landmark event on the rights situation in IOK put their weight behind the recommendations of a United Nations report on the state of human rights in the valley, and called on India to immediately halt its atrocities in Kashmir, the Foreign Office said in a press release on Wednesday.

Besides Azad Jammu and Kashmir Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider and Pakistan’s Ambassador to Belgium, the European Union and Luxembourg Naghmana Alamgir Hashmi, the debate was attended by a large number of MEPs, human rights representatives and civil society organisations, think tanks, diplomats from various countries.

Sub-committee Chair Pier Antonio Panzeri in his opening remarks expressed the EU’s commitment to uphold and protect human rights throughout the world.

He pointed out that the issue of IOK was the longest unresolved issue on the agenda of the UN, and that the EU believes that dialogue among nations is necessary to resolve such issues.

They called on India to immediately put a halt to its atrocities in Indian Occupied Kashmir and carry out investigations into the incidents of grave human rights violations.

This event is a huge diplomatic success for Pakistan as it is the first time in more than a decade that the EU has officially organised an event on IOK, where Islamabad's concerns regarding India’s human rights violations in occupied Kashmir have been discussed.