Shireen Mazari slams UN's role over Kashmir issue

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Human Rights Dr Shireen Mazari on Tuesday said any misadventure by Indian forces would be responded with even greater force and strength, adding that India has continuously violated United Nations’ resolutions on Indian occupied Kashmir.

She urged the international community to raise their voice against human rights violations in held Kashmir and stop Indian brutalities in the Kashmir valley.

The minister was addressing the international seminar titled ‘Hindutva Polices and the State of Minorities in India’ in Islamabad.

“The extremist ideology of Hindutva has found new face and feet under BJP’s leadership, revealing the state’s true face while unravelling its claim of secularism in the process,” she said, adding that in India the lower caste Hindus and minorities like Sikhs, Muslims, Christians and were being discriminated and treated as inferior citizens of state.

“Indian claims of secularism are unraveling under Modi’s regime.”

The daylong seminar, organised by Institute of Policy Studies (IPS), Islamabad, was also addressed by Pakistani Dallit leader Senator Engr. Gianchand, Dr Akis Kalaitzidis (USA), Dr Nitasha Kaul (UK), Murtaza Shibli (from Indian Occupied Kashmir), Dr Mujeeb Afzal, Amb (r) Jalil Abbas Jillani, Amb (r) Zamir Akram, Dr Waqar Masood and Dr Asma Khwaja.

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The human rights minister also criticised UN’s role over Kashmir’s issue, maintaining that while UN resolutions for East Timor were identical to the ones on Kashmir, the later was being neglected in execution merely for being a Muslim minority.

The plight of Muslims of Indian held Kashmir, according to Dr Mazari, was particularly a major concern for Pakistan where the Kashmiri struggle of independence was being repressed by all means giving it a color of religious extremism issue, whereas in reality it was about the struggle for their right of self-determination.

Even as per the UN resolutions, the federal minister said, Indian held Kashmir was an occupied state and from the ongoing suppression to the attempts of changing the region’s demographics, everything that was being done in Indian Occupied Kashmir should be seen as a war crime.

“We need to reiterate that India is committing war crimes in IOK adding that Indian forces used systematic women rape as weapon of war.”