By Asghar Ali Mubarak
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Wednesday categorically rejected the Indian government’s illegal amendments in land ownership laws in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir promulgated under “J-K Re-organisation (Adaptation of Central Laws) Third Order, 2020”, Foreign Office said.
According to a statement issued from Foreign Office, the spokesman said that the highly condemnable Indian action is yet another clear violation of the UN Security Council resolutions, bilateral agreements between Pakistan and India, and international law.
The occupied Kashmir is an internationally recognized dispute under the relevant UN Security Council (UNSC) Resolutions and international law, it said adding that India’s illegal and unilateral actions of 5 August 2019, and subsequent measures, particularly the domicile law and now the land ownership laws, are aimed at changing the demographic structure of IIOJK to convert the Kashmiris into a minority in their own land.
The foreign office spokesman said that changing the demographic structure of the occupied territory is a violation of the 4th Geneva Convention and constitutes a war crime. “All these measures and laws, lacking legal and moral legitimacy, are forced upon the oppressed people of IIOJK through the barrel of the gun with an unprecedented military siege in the most militarized zone in the world.”
The foreign office reiterated that such steps can neither change the disputed nature of the occupied territory nor can they prejudice the inalienable right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people.
The United Nations and the international community must take immediate action to stop India from changing the demography and distinct identity of IIOJK and facilitate the resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute as per the relevant UNSC Resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people.
Current report showed, in Indian Illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Indian forces killed over four hundred thousand Kashmiris including more than 250,000 in Jammu as the occupied territory completed 73 years of invasion by Indian Army on this day in 1947.
A report released by Kashmir Media Service on 27th of October, which is being observed as Black Day in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir, Azad Kashmir and wherever Kashmiris live in the world said that more than 3.5 million Kashmiris were forced to migrate to Azad Kashmir, Pakistan and other parts of the world since October 27, 1947. The report while citing that the Kashmir conflict began in 1846 with the illegal, immoral and inhumane sale of the historic state of Jammu and Kashmir to a non-Kashmiri Dogra family for services rendered to the British Raj said the Princely State obtained independence on August 15, 1947, when British Raj lapsed.
As per Kashmiri scholar Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, “At that moment, under international law as understood by Indian National Congress, the Muslim League and Great Britain, sovereignty in Kashmir devolved on its peoples, not its autocratic Maharaja. Indeed, Kashmir was beset by wholesale domestic revolt against the Maharaja when independence arrived, and widened in the initial months thereafter.”
On seeing that the Maharaja had lost its rule to the mujahideen, the report added, India on October 27, 1947, landed its troops in Jammu and Kashmir and forcibly occupied it against the wishes of the Kashmiri people.
This is how the unending chapter of the sufferings of Kashmiri people started since the 27th of October, 1947, and that is why the day is marked as Black Day by the people of Jammu and Kashmir, every year.
