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Pakistan on Tuesday categorically rejected remarks of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the Kashmir dispute, and called on Delhi to deliver on its commitments to Kashmiris and ensure they have the inalienable right to self-determination.
A day earlier, while addressing a rally in Gujarat, the Indian premier had claimed he had “resolved” the Kashmir issue through the unilateral abrogation of the region’s special constitutional status. Describing this “farcical contention” as not only “false and misleading,” the Foreign Office said it reflected the obliviousness of the Indian leadership about the ground realities in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
“Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally recognized dispute, the resolution of which has been on the agenda of the United Nations since 1948. Despite clear U.N. resolutions that prescribe a free and impartial plebiscite for the final disposition of the dispute, India has not only illegally occupied the territory but is also guilty of egregious human rights violations employing over 900,000 brutal occupation force,” it said, slamming Delhi’s “reprehensible occupation” that it sought to perpetuate through malicious demographic changes and strong-arm tactics. “The craftily staged visits of the Indian leadership to the occupied territory and choreographed launches of so-called development projects in a bid to create a façade of ‘normalcy’ will neither dampen the spirit of the Kashmiris struggling to break free from the illegal Indian occupation nor would it deceive the world into believing India’s deception,” it added.
Advising Modi against making “delusional statements” about resolving the dispute unilaterally, it said the Indian leadership must deliver on its commitments to the Kashmiris and to the world and ensure that the people of Kashmir were accorded their inalienable right to self-determination.
“Pakistan has consistently called upon the international community to assume its role and responsibility with regards to IIOJK and the ongoing Indian atrocities in the occupied territory. India must also be held responsible for its nefarious scheme of altering the demography of IIOJK, as well as for its brutal repression of the innocent Kashmiris,” it said and reiterated calls for human rights and humanitarian organizations to condemn Indian state-terrorism in the region and demand an immediate reversal of the Indian government’s “illegal and unilateral actions” of Aug. 5, 2019.
“The only solution to the Jammu and Kashmir dispute lies in ensuring that the Kashmiris are allowed to exercise their right of self-determination through the democratic method of holding an U.N.-mandated free and impartial plebiscite as espoused in the relevant UNSC resolutions and as per the wishes of the Kashmiri people,” it added.