Obama should be forthright with India on Kashmir human rights violations

President Barack Obama should clearly tell Indian leaders during his upcoming visit that New Delhi’s suppression of basic human rights in the Occupied Kashmir is incompatible with India’s wish to get big regional power status, former AJK prime minister Barrister Sultan Mahmood Chaudhry said. He said in an interview that the glitter of economic opportunity in India should not make any one blind to the situation in Kashmir, where Kashmiri people have gone through untold sufferings, just because they seek to realize their right to self-determination.The Obama administration should tell India clearly that if it wants genuine international respect, it must resolve the Kashmir dispute, said the barrister, who met with Tim Lenderking, Director of the office of Pakistan Affairs and his assistants at the State Department.

“In view of India’s flagrant disregard for UN Security Council resolutions and its relentless reign of repression, it has no moral justification to aspire for membership of an expanded Security Council,” said the former AJK prime minister, who is visiting world capitals to urge efforts towards resolution of the Kashmir dispute.

Barrister Chaudhry, who gave interviews to BBC and VOA during his visit to Washington and met with American experts on South Asia including Walter Anderson and Howard Schaffer, suggested that as part of a diplomatic push towards resolution of lingering Jammu and Kashmir dispute, President Obama should also meet senior Kashmiri leadership.

“This is high time that when President Obama visits New Delhi, he should talk about the (need for) Kashmir resolution and meet Kashmiri leadership--- right now; I know, Afghanistan is the top issue for the United States in the region but the core isssue is Kashmir,” Chaudhry stated. Emphasizing the linkage between durable peace in Afghanistan and resoution to the lonstanding Kashmir dispute between South Asian powers India and Pakistan,he argued that, “until and unless the core issue is resolved, there will be no peace in that region and Afghanistan issue is also interlinked with Kashmir.” He explained if the Kashmir situation continues to fester on Pakistan’s Eastern border, Islamabad will not be able to play a more effective anti-terror role on its restive Western border with Afghanistan. The politician voiced his support for Pakistan-India dialogue on settling the UN-recongized dispute but said the real party are the Kashmiri people. “That’s why President Obama should also meet the Kashmiri leaders during his visit.”

In the post-9/11 narrative, he said, New Delhi has tried to portray Kashmiris’ widespread discontent and indigenous, peaceful struggle for freedom from Indian occupation as a terrorist situation. But this Indian campaign to equate people’s movement with terrorism runs counter to the ground reality, he pointed out. The former prime minister of Azad Jammu and Kashmir also made the point that behind the facade of Indian economic progress lies the dark spectre of gross human rights violations by Indian security forces that continue unabated in the occupied valley.

He also asked New Delhi to take political confidence building measures, release APHC leaders, allow them to undertake international travels and withdraw Indain forces from cities and towns of Occupied Kashmir.


(2010-10-30/Associated Press of Pakistan)