JKCHR calls for clarification on French adviser’s Kashmir remarks

LONDON: The Jammu and Kashmir Council for Human Rights (JKCHR) has called on France to qualify and clarify a statement made by diplomatic adviser to the (French) president on Kashmir, Emmanuel Bonne, during his recent visit to India, “which was at variance to French position and has wronged the Kashmiris struggle for right to self-determination”.

According to a statement, JKCHR President Dr Syed Nazir Gilani sent a communiqué to France President Emmanuel Macron, expressing gratitude to France for her contributions made to the debates at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) since January 1948, that created a jurisprudence of Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination.

It recalled that France at the 539th meeting of the UNSC held on March 30, 1951 had said: “Resolutions of 13 August 1948 and 5 January, to which we must always return because they won the express agreement of both India and Pakistan. If the parties are unable to reach agreement on the plan submitted to them, provision is made for arbitration, and, to make assurance doubly sure, arbitration is to be carried out by an arbitrator or panel of arbitrators appointed not by a political body but by the President of International Court of Justice.”

The JKCHR said the people of Kashmir remain grateful to permanent and non-permanent members of UNSC who have contributed to the jurisprudence of Kashmir case. “They carry a debt of gratitude for their hard work in finalising a UN package to resolve the question of a UN supervised ‘Plebiscite’ after India surrendered her case at the UNSC on 15th January, 1948,” it added.