Pakistan’s Ambassador to the UN, Maleeha
Lodhi assailed India for the use of pellet guns against peaceful protestors in
Occupied Kashmir, describing this as the first "mass blinding in human
history", says a press release received here today from New York.
Speaking in the General Assembly's Special
Political and Decolonization (Fourth) Committee, the Pakistani envoy
called the use of pellet guns against unarmed people a ‘war crime’ that has
left a generation of young Kashmiris blinded and maimed for
life. “This has been aptly described as the first mass blinding in human
history”, she said.
Emphasising the importance of resolving the
Kashmir issue, Ambassador Lodhi said that the decolonization agenda of the
United Nations will remain incomplete without resolution of this long festering
dispute which is among the oldest items on the UN agenda, in addition to
Palestine.
“This represents the most persistent
failure of the United Nations”, she insisted.
For seventy years, Ambassador Lodhi
said, India has prevented the people of occupied Jammu and Kashmir,
through force and fraud, from ‘exercising their fundamental and
inalienable right to self-determination’.
She told the world body that the deployment
of tens of thousands of Indian troops in occupied Kashmir has been aimed
to suppress the legitimate freedom struggle of the Kashmiri people.
India, she said, "uses all
methods from barbaric violence and extreme cruelty to fraudulent elections to
deprive the Kashmiris of their right to self-determination and perpetuate its
unlawful occupation”.
But, Ambassador Lodhi asserted, none of
this has extinguished the Kashmiris yearning and aspiration for freedom from
occupation, adding that the people of Jammu and Kashmir will continue to wage
the struggle for their right to self-determination with courage and
conviction.
The Pakistani envoy reminded the world body
that the right of the Kashmiri people to self-determination has been recognized
and promised to them by the UN Security Council and by both India and
Pakistan. “But they are still waiting for the UN to fulfill its promise of
holding a UN supervised Plebiscite to enable them to determine their
political destiny”, she said.
Reaffirming Kashmir’s status as a disputed
territory, the final status of which has yet to be determined in accordance
with several resolutions of the UN Security Council, Ambassador Lodhi said,
“Contrary to Indian claims, Jammu and Kashmir never was and never can
be an integral part of India”.
Ambassador Lodhi also brought into focus
the plight of the Palestinian people, saying, “In the Middle East, the tragedy
of Palestine has intensified."
She said that "the continued
denial of the right to self-determination of the Palestinian people is the core
underlying cause of conflict and a grave impediment to lasting peace in the
Middle East”.
Ambassador Lodhi expressed Pakistan’s
continued support for the just struggle of the Palestinian people for freedom
and added that a strong and viable state of Palestine was the only guarantor of
peace in the region. She criticized the continuation of the illegal policy of
settlement construction which was progressively eroding the future state
of Palestine from within.
Pointing out that the
continued existence of colonialism in any form was contrary to the UN
Charter and to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Ambassador Lodhi
called for the summoning of political will for implementation of relevant UN
resolutions and decisions on decolonization.
“The UN has a moral responsibility in this
regard and we must all work toward eliminating the remaining vestiges of
colonialism”, she concluded.
