ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The Adviser to the Prime Minister on Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz has emphasized that the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s call for a multilateral approach to settle the Jammu and Kashmir dispute with an immediate end to bloodshed in Indian Occupied Kashmir must be welcomed.
In a statement released by the Foreign Office in Islamabad on Tuesday, Sartaj Aziz also welcomed Tayyip Erdogan’s recent offer to strengthen the dialogue process among the stakeholders for resolving the Kashmir issue.
The adviser said that the Indian counter proposal that it is ready for bilateral dialogue with Pakistan is no longer credible because in the past two decades, India has scuttled all opportunities for a meaningful dialogue to resolve the Kashmir issue in accordance with the UN Security Council’s relevant Resolutions on Kashmir.
Sartaj Aziz said that Pakistan has always welcomed the statements and endeavours aimed at addressing the human rights issues in Indian Occupied Kashmir and the resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute.
Moreover, he said that Indian attempt to portray indigenous uprising in Kashmir as terrorism has been rejected by the International Community.
“India’s contention that Kashmir issue is, primarily, an issue of cross-border terrorism, is a claim that no one in the world is prepared to accept today”, Sartaj Aziz said.
The adviser said that the Indian government has broken its own record of brutality in the Indian Occupied Kashmir, not only in target killing but also by indiscriminately killing over 100 young unarmed Kashmiri protestors.
Sartaj Aziz said that the Indian forces have blinded hundreds of Kashmiris including children, and injured over 16,000 protesters with live ammunition, pellet guns and gas shells. That is why the New York Times labeled the year 2016 as a “Year of dead eyes” in Kashmir, he added.
“Nobody believes that thousands of young boys and girls, who have been agitating ceaselessly since July, 2016 are terrorists”, Sartaj Aziz said.
The foreign affairs adviser pointed out that India cannot also ignore the fact that the people of Occupied Kashmir are losing faith in Indian democracy since in the recent sham by-election in Srinagar on April 9 in which the voter turnout was only seven percent, and when the re-polling was done it collapsed to two percent.
The second by-election in Ananta has been postponed to May 25 and the Election Commission has demanded thousands of additional troops to be able to conduct the poll, he further said.
Sartaj Aziz said that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) ‘Declaration’ adopted by the 13th Summit in Istanbul in April last, out-rightly rejected Indian attempts of equating the Kashmiris’ freedom struggle with terrorism.
The adviser said that the discovery of over 7,000 ‘unnamed and unmarked mass graves’ have proven through forensic analysis, undertaken by independent investigators, that those buried were Kashmiris belonging to the Indian Occupied Kashmir.
Furthermore, he said that political analysts and members of civil society from across the globe have concluded that the large scale uprising which is going on in Indian Occupied Kashmir, involving mostly young unarmed Kashmiris confronting fully armed Indian occupation forces, clearly shows that Kashmir is a burning issue requiring urgent International attention.
