UNITED NATIONS, Jun 24: Ambassador Munir Akram, Permanent Representative of Pakistan to the UN on Thursday said that India had denied the right of self-determination to the Kashmiri people, in violation of multiple Security Council resolutions.
Also, he blamed India for its continued widespread and systematic violations of human rights and international humanitarian law, including war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied Jammu & Kashmir.
While addressing to a thematic debate in the 193-member UN General Assembly on the doctrine of responsibility to protect (R2P), Ambassador Munir Akram said the concept of R2P rests upon three pillars: the responsibility of each state to protect its populations; the responsibility of the international community to assist states in protecting their populations; and the responsibility of the international community to protect when a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations.)
“One specific circumstance where those provisions would apply is in situations of foreign occupation or alien domination,” the Pakistani envoy said, adding that such situations were often rife with pressing human rights emergencies and could easily spiral to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“Yet, we have not heard from the concept’s sponsors about the need for ‘collective action’ to protect the people of occupied Palestine or of Indian-occupied Jammu & Kashmir,” Ambassador Akram added.
For more than seven decades, he said the proponents of R2P have observed a deafening silence on these Indian crimes in occupied Jammu and Kashmir”.
The concept of R2P should also be invoked to prevent the danger of an impending genocide against the 200 million Muslims of India, the Pakistani envoy went on to say.
“No one can be unaware of the systematic campaign underway in India by the ruling adherents of Hindutva to suppress Muslims and to eliminate the rich legacy of Islam in India,” he said, adding, “Muslims are murdered by lynch mobs; subjected to periodic pogroms; robbed of their livelihoods and citizenship under the patronage and with the encouragement of the ruling BJP-RSS government.”
Most recently, the ambassador said, hundreds of thousands of Muslims, who took to the streets to protest the Indian government’s complicity to the denigration of the Holy Prophet (Peace Be Upon Him), have been subject to the worst form of violation of their basic human rights, with the homes of Muslims protestors having been unlawfully bulldozed as a form of collective punishment.
“These Indian crimes fall squarely within the ambit of the World Summit’s decisions on R2P. We call upon the international community, in particular the proponents of R2P for the sake of their own credibility, to come forward and offer protection to the people of Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, and Muslim and other religious minorities in India,” he said.
“Universal and consistent adherence to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter is imperative to ensure the legitimacy of doctrines like R2P, and to ensure universal accountability and justice for all grave and systematic violations of human rights and international law.”
