Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s speech to the UN General Assembly hit all the right notes. Unlike previous addresses by Nawaz himself and his predecessors, which mentioned Kashmir only in passing, a substantial part of this speech was devoted to the rights of Kashmiris. Nawaz was wise in framing Kashmir as far more than just a territorial dispute between estranged neighbours; he focused on the daily brutalities committed by Indian soldiers on a people whose only crime is the desire to chart their own course. To ram home the point, after his speech Nawaz handed UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon a dossier of Indian atrocities, including photographs of children blinded and maimed by rubber pellets. Thanks to the relentless bombardment of Indian propaganda, the international community is left with the impression that the Kashmiri people are mere pawns in a terroristic war being waged on India by Pakistan. Nawaz went some way in dispelling that fallacy. It was particularly smart of him to refer to the ‘Kashmiri intifada’, thereby linking the Kashmiri liberation movement with the Palestinian one which, the US apart, is widely recognised as a genuine drive for independence from illegal Israeli occupation. Nawaz’s aim at the General Assembly was to show that the uprising in Kashmir is not being guided from outside and is an understandable response to India’s oppression.
Nawaz presented himself as the voice of diplomacy. His suggestions to the UN were simple and persuasive: it needs to send observers to Kashmir to witness first-hand India’s aggression and India needs to come to the negotiating table with Pakistan and not set any pre-conditions. India has rejected both proposals in the past and is now using the pretext of the Uri attack to permanently put them off the table. India continues to blame Pakistan for the attack and even summoned our high commissioner to say evidence in that regard would be forthcoming. But its story may be unravelling. On Wednesday, the Indian Express published a story contradicting the claim made by the Indian DGMO that the weapons recovered from the four men who attacked the army camp bore Pakistani markings. The response from the Ministry of Defence to this explosive revelation was to demand that any reports on the army be submitted for ‘pre-verification’. India already censors all media in Kashmir; it now wants to extend that censorship to the rest of the country. It is also trying to isolate Pakistan internationally by threatening to pull out of the Saarc summit in Islamabad next month and refusing to allow our athletes to compete in the Kabbadi World Cup in Ahmedabad. It is now up to the international community whether it continues to avert its gaze from India’s occupation of Kashmir or whether it realises blaming Pakistan is just a smokescreen for its refusal to accept 70 years worth of UN resolutions on Kashmir. Nawaz Sharif’s speech has placed the ball in the UN’s court and they need to deliver a fitting response.https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/151940-Nawaz-at-the-UN
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