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Mr. Chairman,
We thank the Secretary General for his report.
The right to self-determination is an ideal and principle that defined the democratic aspirations underpinning the foundations of the post 1945 international order.
It is embodied in the UN Charter’s opening words: “We the peoples”.
It is the fountainhead of all other rights as it contains within it a solemn guarantee that peoples everywhere in the world will have the right to determine for themselves, without force or compulsion, their own destiny.
For this reason, the right to self-determination was enshrined in the UN Charter and established as a fundamental norm of international law. It is also an overarching principle in all other landmark documents, including the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
While the international community has continued to reaffirm this principle, it is tragic that millions across the world continue to be deprived of this fundamental right.
This is a betrayal, not only of the high ideals of the UN Charter, but also of our collective commitment to uphold these principles.
The price of this failure is being paid, in blood, by successive generations of people living under foreign occupation.
In Indian occupied Jammu and Kashmir, this bloodletting has gone on for over seventy years, and has accounted for the lives of over 100,000 Kashmiris.
The Kashmiris have suffered seven decades of occupation awaiting fulfilment of their inalienable right to self-determination as promised by not one, but 11 Security Council resolutions.
In October 1947, the Indian occupation of Jammu and Kashmir was based on an utterly false pretext. With the illegal Indian annexation of Jammu and Kashmir on 5 August 2019, the tragedy of Kashmir has come full circle.
Ever since, an iron curtain has descended upon the occupied territory. As I speak, the lockdown of the occupied territory including a sweeping communication blackout and cruel clampdown has entered its 85th day, with no sign of abating. For almost three months, the occupied territory has been transformed into a giant armed cage with additional troops inducted into what was already the world’s most militarized zone.
Harrowing stories abound of widespread torture, inhumane or degrading treatment and arbitrary arrests; of how thousands including children have been abducted from their homes in the dead of the night, without any trace; of hospitals running dangerously short of supplies and turning into graveyards. Meanwhile Shotgun pellets continue to be used which have already blinded and maimed thousands of Kashmiris including children.
Yesterday, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights reaffirmed its grave concerns over reports of the excessive use of force, including use of pellet guns, and has urged the Indian authorities to ‘unlock the situation and fully restore the rights of people’; the international media and human rights organizations have also expressed similar grave concerns over the grim humanitarian situation in occupied Kashmir.
Like all oppressors, India continues to delude itself that it can subjugate the Kashmiris through the application of extreme force. That it can extinguish the light of freedom from the hearts and minds of the brave Kashmiris.
It ignores the lesson of history that a people’s yearning for freedom can never be crushed by brute force. Might can never be Right.
Mr. Chairman,
My delegation would like to reaffirm that the Jammu and Kashmir dispute will remain on the UN agenda and Pakistan will continue to be the voice of the Kashmiris at the UN until the people of occupied Kashmir are allowed to exercise their will, according to the agreed method prescribed by the Security Council – a plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations.
The people of occupied Jammu and Kashmir find courage in their conviction that, the dark night of occupation, however long, will give way to the dawn of freedom and the triumph of justice. Until then, they will find Pakistan standing resolutely with them.
Let me close with a couplet by one of the greatest poets of the East, Faiz Ahmed Faiz , so apt in the context of Kashmir:
“While we are compelled to draw breath in the shadows of tyranny.
The days of tyranny are surely few.”