Kashmiris to decide their fate, not India, says Sartaj

ISLAMABAD: The conflict in Kashmir has taken a new shape with India telling Pakistan to change its thoughts and Pakistan asserting the point that the Kashmiris will decide their fate and not India.

In a belated response, Pakistan told India that only the people of Kashmir can decide their future status and this decision is certainly not for New Delhi to take.

“Such a verdict on the future of Kashmir can only be given by the people of Kashmir and not by the External Affairs Minister of India. This right has been promised to the people of Kashmir by the UN Security Council. It is high time that India allowed the people of Jammu & Kashmir to exercise this right through a free and fair UN-supervised plebiscite. Once the majority of the people of Kashmir have voted for joining either Pakistan or India, the whole world will accept this verdict of the Kashmiri people,” Adviser on Foreign Policy Sartaj Aziz was quoted as saying by his office.As western capitals look away from the world’s largest prison on earth because of monetary gains while eyeing large Indian markets, nevertheless Pakistan will take Kashmir’s cause to the UN, international community and human rights organisations to play its role in stopping the Indian atrocities in the Indian-occupied Kashmir against innocent and defenceless Kashmiris, said the adviser.

Earlier, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had claimed that the whole of Jammu and Kashmir would become part of Pakistan.In a badly drafted statement, the Foreign Office tried to contradict an earlier statement by Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who had said that “the whole of Jammu & Kashmir belongs to India and Kashmir will never become part of Pakistan”.

Timing is important in matters of foreign policy and it was late on Sunday evening that Sartaj Aziz found time to respond to his Indian counterpart.

Sharif had also lauded the sacrifice of Kashmiri commander Burhan Muzaffar who was taken out by Indian security forces and termed him a “martyr”.

This has incensed Swaraj who claimed that Burhan was a wanted terrorist for India. She conveniently overlooks the reality that thousands of Kashmiris have risen against the Indian occupation while rallying around the memory of Burhan.

“Here again, India cannot ignore the fact that over 200,000 Kashmiris participated in the funeral prayers of Burhan Muzaffar Wani in 50 different locations throughout the Indian occupied Kashmir despite strict curfew clamped in the Valley, which still continues 15 days after Wani’s extrajudicial murder on 8 July 2016. Let us not forget, as one Indian writer has reminded us, that not long ago the British labelled Indian freedom fighters as traitors and terrorists because at that time India was considered an integral part of the British Empire,” said the adviser.

Government and the people of Pakistan remain firmly committed in their moral, diplomatic and political support to the Kashmiris’ indigenous movement for self-determination and resolution of the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions on Kashmir, he said.

Even in India, he said, conscientious voices have raised concern over the brutalities and reign of terror unleashed by the Indian forces in IOK.

 Muhammad Saleh Zaafir adds: The puppet Chief Minister of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK), Mehbooba Mufti, while lashing out at Pakistan for instigating youths in Kashmir to take up arms, said on Sunday that Pakistan has to change its policy, and asked New Delhi to revoke the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in IOK on trial basis in selected areas as a beginning towards “winning the hearts” of people.

“Today when a Kashmiri child takes up gun, they (Pakistan) call him leader (referring to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif statement in the federal cabinet) and say he is doing well, but when their own children, some from madrassas etc take up gun, they attack them with drones and hang them in military courts. I feel Pakistan, which is viewed by people of Kashmir with sympathy, has this time committed excess. If they instigate our children to pick up gun and then say you will become our leader if you get killed in encounter, then I think they need to change this policy,” Mehbooba told reporters in Srinagar.

The chief minister was speaking on a day she met Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh who took stock of the situation in the Valley where more than 50 people have died and over 5,000 civilians have been injured in clashes that followed the martyrdom of Burhan Muzaffar Wani.

“Pakistan says that we are victims of terror, their 146 children died in school attack in a single day and people fear to go inside their mosques,” Mehbooba said, hitting out at the neighbouring country for allegedly encouraging the violence in Kashmir.

The chief minister said there was a need to take “bold measures to address the issue as the people of Jammu and Kashmir were our own”. She said there was an opportunity not just for India but also for Pakistan to have a dialogue and address the issue.

Mehbooba said a start has to be made from somewhere to improve the situation in the state and suggested revocation of AFSPA from some areas, beginning with 25 to 50 police stations, as an experiment. “If the situation remained well, then it should be revoked entirely or it can be implemented again if you feel that militancy did not allow it to be revoked,” the chief minister said.

“The start has to be from somewhere, the experiments have to be from somewhere like it (AFSPA) be revoked from 25 or 40 police stations to see the reaction,” she said. The controversial act gives immunity from prosecution and other legal proceedings to the armed forces as PDP and opposition National Conference have been demanding its revocation.

“I think today we have an opportunity, for the whole country as well as for Pakistan, that if they are really our well-wishers, then they should talk,” she said. Mehbooba revealed that there are lakhs of kanals of land under security forces, which they do not need now and should be returned for civilian use. “If you return them to us, we will construct colleges, universities or parks so that people feel that our situation is improving as security forces were moving backwards and institutions and recreational facilities are being constructed there,” she said.

The chief minister also praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to Lahore in December. “It was not an ordinary gesture that the prime minister of a country goes like that, but unfortunately then Pathankot happened and because of that the process was stalled.”

The chief minister regretted that the political process started by her father and Vajpayee was not taken forward and held politicians responsible for stalling the peace process in the state. “I firmly believe in what (former prime minister Atal Bihari) Vajpayee said that you can change friends but not neighbours, so till the time both the countries do not keep good relations and improve the situation, neither they nor we can progress.

“Our prime minister had made a beginning by going to Lahore. That is the only way to remove poverty in both the countries and take Jammu and Kashmir out of the morass,” she said, adding the fate of state and the country are intertwined. “The political process started by Sayeed from opening routes to healing touch, somewhere that has stopped and only governance and development were talked about and to what limit that happened, that is again a matter of discussion.

“The roadmap by Mufti and Vajpayee that borders cannot be changed but made irrelevant so that people move across and there is trade. (Former PM) Manmohan Singh also took the process forward but the political process, the dialogue process, which started with L K Advani and the Hurriyet leaders here, was not taken forward,” she said. “Some buses move from here, some from there, but the communication, banking facilities, exchange of students, doctors and civil society, which should have been there, so that we see what is there and what problems they have and they can come here, but that did not happen,” she said, adding, “the politicians are responsible for it”.

“The governments here be it the NC-Congress government before ours or the UPA in Delhi, we all is responsible for this that we think the situation has to be normalized whenever it is bad, but we forget once the situation is normal,” she added.