“As the presence of troops of Pakistan in the territory of the State of Jammu and Kashmir constitutes a material change in the situation since it was represented by the Government of Pakistan before the Security Council, the Government of Pakistan agrees to withdraw its troops from that State.”
—Resolution adopted by the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan on 13 August 1948, (Document No.1100, Para. 75, dated the 9th November, 1948)
As a custom, Pakistan raised the bogey of ‘K’ word with plebiscite in the UN General Assembly. Nawaz Sharif remarked that non-resolution of the ‘Kashmir dispute’ is the most persistent failure of the United Nations. It could not garner international attention as it did earlier. On the contrary, the videos showing Pakistan brutality and protests against Islamabad in the Pakistan occupied Jammu and Kashmir (POJK) are going viral. Recently, Chairman of the Anjuman Minhaj-e-Rasool, Moulana Syed Athar Hussain Dehlavi, who toured POJK said that people residing in the region want to be a part of Bharat as they are impressed with the governance in Bharat and distressed with growing extremism in Pakistan. This transformation is a sign that the discourse on Jammu and Kashmir is set to change forever.
Pakistan has been harping on the plebiscite on international forums for decades now. During the Cold War period, it could manage to place the Kashmir issue on the agenda, counting on the Western support. Both Pakistan and their masters in the West did not recognise that precondition for any form of plebiscite was restoration of ground position, which means complete withdrawal of Pakistani troops from the occupied region, which Pakistan did not follow then.
Technically, J&K was never an issue of self-determination with the UN and choice was always between Bharat and Pakistan, which was cleared with the accession and further adoption of the Constitution by the J&K Assembly. The 1948 Resolutions on Kashmir have lost both their validity and relevance. That is the reason Kofi Annan, the then Secretary General of the UN, clarified to the Pakistani media in 2001, it is not implementable. The Shimla Agreement of 1972 has further nullified any role for international agency in the bilateral relations, to which Pakistan is also a party. Since 1964, no single discussion has taken place in the UN Security Council, therefore, the UN officially removed ‘Kashmir’ from the list of unresolved dispute in 2010.
People of Jammu and Kashmir have time and again voted for the Assembly and Parliamentary elections of Bharat and have given their plebiscite through votes, to which Pakistan funded fringe elements such as Hurriyat always try to sabotage. While on the other side of J&K, demography was forcefully changed. Basic rights such as equality before law and right to freedom of association or formation of political parties have been denied to the people, which the courts in Pakistan have also accepted. The region did not get any democratic representation. Economically, they are deprived and their resources are exploited for the benefit of other regions, as in the case of Mangla Dam. People of this occupied region always live under the shadow of violence, as POJK is the main centre for terrorist training camps. The protests in Mirpur-Muzaffarabad have just started getting the lime light; Gilgit Baltistan is still in dark as there is no media coverage of atrocities and aspirations of these neglected regions.
That Pakistan is the epicentre of terrorism is a well known fact now. On the other hand Bharat is widely recognised as the power centre in global matrix. Therefore, ‘K’ word is no longer a currency in international politics. Now freeing the POJK from the illegal occupation of Pakistan, as agreed in the UN resolution, is the only solution to end this longstanding issue.
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