OIC on Kashmir

EDITORIAL: An emergency virtual meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation's (OIC's) Contact Group on Kashmir was held on Monday. Attended among others by the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Azerbaijan and Niger, it was to review the latest developments in Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and discuss actions that needed to be taken to address the urgent situation. As for the first part of the agenda, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi apprised the Group members in great detail of illegal and immoral actions New Delhi had taken since August 2019 annexation of the disputed region, including efforts to alter its demographic character. Drawing the participants' attention to extrajudicial killings in fake 'encounters', cordon and search operations, indiscriminate use of pellet guns and live ammunition against unarmed protesters, he said Indian security forces are operating with complete impunity under the cover of draconian laws, such as the PSA, AFSPA and UAPA. In the last 20 days, Qureshi told the Group, 30 young Kashmiris have been martyred, adding that "India's actions represent state-terrorism at its worst."

All this is pretty well-known from media reports. Various international rights organisations, including the UN Human Rights Council, have been expressing grave concern over the situation. The humanitarian crisis created by brutal repression amid an unremitting lockdown in the occupied region, and related intensification of violence along the Line of Control (LoC) and the Working Boundary seem to have called for the emergency meeting. In fact, Qureshi also informed the participants about how New Delhi had been resorting to violations of the 2003 ceasefire agreement. Since January 1 of this year, he pointed out, India has committed 1,440 ceasefire violations. And that it deliberately targeted innocent civilians on the Azad Jammu & Kashmir side of the LoC, killing 13 people and injuring as many as 104, including women and children. The ultra Hindu nationalist BJP government has been doing that to deflect international attention from its rights abuses in the occupied J&K, escalating tensions with this country.

As regards the vital question what needs to be done, Qureshi asked the OIC to tell India to rescind annexation of occupied J&K, hold UN supervised plebiscite there, end human rights abuses and provide unhindered access to OIC, UN and human rights organisations and also allow international media to investigate and report on the situation. Perhaps it should have been better for him to focus, at this point in time, only on the immediate issues. In any event, the Contact Group though could not be expected to go beyond extending ritual support, as it did urging India to halt security operations against the people of Jammu and Kashmir immediately; respect basic human rights; refrain from changing the demographic structure of the disputed territory; and settle the conflict under the relevant UN resolutions. This is empty rhetoric and unlikely to have any effect. India is well aware that OIC is a mere talk shop; it also knows that the countries having the capability to create a serious problem for it, such as by throwing out the multitude of its migrant workers and professionals, are not going to do that. Bilateral trade between certain Gulf states and India and investments having grown substantially during the recent years, those countries are not expected to use their economic clout in favour of besieged Muslim brethren in Kashmir. Still, the Kashmiri people need all the support they can get, even if it is mere lip-service.