UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has urged the advocates of the concept of “responsibility to protect”, or R2P, to apply it to safeguard the oppressed people of Palestine and Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK).
“Apart from its abuse, the concept of R2P has also led to the criticism that some powerful states have failed to invoke R2P by showing hesitancy, either in condemning the massive human rights violations committed by so-called ‘strategic allies’ or by holding them accountable in the Security Council,” Ambassador Aamir Khan, deputy permanent representative of Pakistan to the UN, told the UN General Assembly.
One specific circumstance, where #R2P would surely apply, is in situations of foreign occupation or alien domination, such as, in occupied Palestine or in Indian-occupied Jammu & Kashmir, where voices to intervene to protect populations are unappealingly quiet.
The concept of R2P rests on three pillars – responsibility of each state to protect its populations; responsibility of the international community to assist states in protecting their populations and responsibility of the international community to protect when a state is manifestly failing to protect its populations.
Speaking in a debate on the responsibility to protect and the prevention of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity, the Pakistani envoy said that for more than seven decades, India had denied the right of self-determination to the Kashmiri people, in violation of multiple resolutions of the Security Council, prescribing a free and fair plebiscite.
India, he said, had deployed 900,000 troops, resorted to extra-judicial killings; forced abductions; collective punishments; and the incarceration of the entire political leadership of the All Parties Hurriyet Conference (APHC).
To this end, he noted that Pakistan had circulated a dossier with the evidence of 3,432 war crimes, committed by India’s officials in Jammu and Kashmir, adding that Muslims’ persecution had become a ‘routine norm’ for India.
On Saturday, during a visit of Indian Home Minister Amit Shah to IIOJK, Ambassador Khan said that Indian Army personnel stormed into a mosque in Pulwama district of south Kashmir while Muslims were offering prayers and forced them to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ against their will.
“The International community, specially the advocates of R2P concept, must carefully analyse the devastating human rights situation that is transpiring in India as well as the occupied territory of Jammu and Kashmir,” the Pakistani envoy said. APP
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