EDITORIAL: As the besieged Kashmiris and Pakistan inundate India with protests against its bloody oppression in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) Conservative members of British parliament with Muslim constituents have also started to speak up about the illegality and brutality of Narendra Modi’s policies. An online article co-authored by two well-respected British journalists, Peter Osborne and Jan-Peter Westad, quotes Conservative Friends of Kashmir Chairman, Paul Bristow, as saying: “the fact that a much more aggressive India has abandoned any attempt to be a secular government, combined with basic issues of human rights, means that Kashmir is now an issue for us.” In an indirect reference to Delhi government’s claims that Kashmir is its internal, or at best, a bilateral matter between Pakistan and India, he pointed out that Britain does not say that sovereignty over the Falkland Islands is a matter between Britain and Argentine, but that it’s an international matter. The same should apply to Kashmir, adding “we need to take account of the view of people in Kashmir itself, not do so is morally indefensible.”
As a matter of fact, the Kashmir dispute is a legacy of British colonialism; the UK has a moral responsibility to help resolve it. The issue has roots in the Partition Plan with India laying claims to Kashmir on the basis of a contentious Instrument of Accession, it says, the Maharaja of Kashmir signed with it. But soon afterwards, the people of Kashmir helped by Pakistani tribesmen offered resistance to that ruse, which was when India sent its forces into the disputed state and later went to the United Nations (UN) seeking its intervention. The UN Security Council passed resolutions calling for ceasefire followed by a plebiscite so the Kashmiri people could decide whether to join Pakistan or India, also establishing UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan which still exists, giving a lie to New Delhi’s “internal matter” refrain. For more than thirty years the people of IIOJK have been waging a relentless struggle against Indian occupation at the cost of over 100,000 lives. That India has spurious claims over Kashmir is also obvious from the fact that for over a year the region remains under a communications blackout amid curfews, mass arrests, and custodial killings. Rampant human rights violations and abuses have prompted international rights organizations to declare the situation in IIOJK a humanitarian disaster. In a recent statement, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet expressed grave concern over continued incidents of military and police violence against unarmed civilians in IIOJK, including use of pellet guns, and detention of political leaders. New Delhi would be wise to understand that such abominable repressive tactics do no work in the long run. As some prominent opinion leaders inside India, such as former external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha, have been saying Delhi cannot carry on with this policy forever, and that at some point it will have to talk to the Kashmiri people as well as Pakistan.
Unfortunately, the Western countries who lose no opportunity to castigate their rival states, Russia and China, for relatively much minor rights violations, keep on ignoring India’s horrendous rights abuses in IIOJK because of their economic and geo-political interests. But the risks of letting India get away with unspeakable crimes against humanity are too great. Considering its rulers’ habit of blaming their problems in the disputed region on Pakistan, the situation could easily lead to an all-out war between the two nuclear-armed nations - something no one in their right mind would want to see.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2020
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