Foreign Desk Report
NEW YORK: Pakistan has called on the world community to recognize the “explosive environment” created by the Indian government in South Asia through its increasing military adventurism along the Line of Control (LoC) coupled with continuing repression in occupied Kashmir as well as targeting of Muslims in India.
The call was made by Pakistan’s Ambassador to the United States, Asad Majeed Khan, in an article published in The Washington Times, in which he also warned that India could start another confrontation with Pakistan.
“This is not the time for warmongering,” he wrote, pointing that Pakistan, India and the people of Kashmir were facing a common and deadly threat in coronavirus.
“The international community needs to recognize that the (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s government has created an explosive environment in South Asia, just as Pakistan had warned.”
“Above all,” the Pakistani envoy said, “there is need for U.S. leadership.” Referring to President Donald Trump repeated offers to mediate between Pakistan and India on Kashmir, Ambassador Khan said that the U.S. leader sees resolution of the decades-old dispute as key to achieving lasting peace and stability in South Asia and unleashing the region’s enormous economic potential.
“Anyone who shares that vision for South Asia would welcome the president’s offer,” the Pakistani envoy added.
Since 1947, he said, successive Indian governments had brutalized Kashmiris, who are now enduring a ‘double lockdown’, and denied them their right to self-determination. Yet the level of violence, torture and human rights violations being committed by Indian security forces under the Modi government now was unprecedented even for Kashmir.
At a time when other countries are facilitating the free flow, exchange and sharing of information to fight the pandemic, India has imprisoned Kashmiris in an information black hole, it was pointed out. “As if this was not enough, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has sneakily introduced a new ordinance to effect demographic change in Kashmir, believing that the world would be too distracted to notice.”
“To understand what is happening in Kashmir as well as the alarming rise in anti-Muslim violence across India, one must go back to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the Hindu nationalist paramilitary organization that gave birth to the BJP.”
