Don’t know if Nawaz will go to UK: FM

LONDON: Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Sunday said it was not in his knowledge whether or not PML-N Quaid and former prime minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif will go to London.

Qureshi arrived here to attend events in connection with the Kashmir Solidarity Day. Talking to the media persons after his arrival here, the minister told a reporter that the decision to let Nawaz go to the United Kingdom did not rest with him.

The minister said the Indian Held Kashmir (IHK) was facing the worst human rights situation and the international community must take notice of it. He regretted the world silence on unabated incidents of torture and aggression, indiscriminate use of pellet guns by the Indian security forces and rape and killing of innocent Kashmiris in the Indian Held Kashmir. He said during the visit of Indian Premier Narendra Modi to the Held Kashmir, there was a complete shutter-down strike in Srinagar.

“The Kashmiris were expressing their resentment and had taken practical steps,” he said, expressing his wonder over the oppressive measures taken in the world’s highly militarized area in the wake of Modi's visit. The minister asked if such grave human rights violations had been allowed in any civilised society of the world and urged India to realise the seriousness of the situation in the IHK.

The minister asked why India had clamped down on the social and print media and disrupted the internet. “It was a kind of media gag in the IHK,” he said and invited the world media to highlight the situation.

He said certain incidents often made headlines in the international media, but the grave human rights violations being committed by the occupation forces in the IHK on a daily basis were being ignored. To a query, he replied that there was complete national consensus on the Kashmir issue.

He said the conference in the United Kingdom (UK) would deliberate upon the Kashmir situation where he would reiterate Pakistan’s stance. Qureshi said the UK Parliament and the UN rights body had also launched their reports on the gross human rights violations in the IHK.