The Kashmiris in India held Jammu and Kashmir, Azad territory and Pakistanis in the country and abroad observed the Kashmir Black Day on October 27, 2023. Huge public rallies, demonstrations and commemoration sessions were held in major cities worldwide to condemn India’s illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir that took place on October 27, 1947, when Indian troops unlawfully entered the disputed valley and took control of the Muslim majority region. Historically, New Delhi’s complicity with Kashmiri Hindu Maharaja and forceful occupation of Jammu and Kashmir caused a lifelong problem for millions of Kashmiri Muslims, splitting the territory into two, prompting displacement and migration along with instigating rivalry between the newly liberated neighbouring states, India and Pakistan.
India has long been forcibly occupying Jammu and Kashmir over the past seven and a half decades, while Kashmir is one of the longstanding unresolved disputes on the agenda of the UN Security Council (UNSC) so far. The Indian rulers themselves took the Kashmir issue to the United Nations and categorically acknowledged the need for a peaceful settlement of the issue by holding a plebiscite in the Jammu and Kashmir region under the UN’s supervision but later treacherously violated the UN resolutions on one or the other pretext. Over the past decades, Indian-occupied Jammu and Kashmir remained one of the world’s most militarized zones as New Delhi deployed over nine hundred thousand troops to suppress Kashmiris’ rightful quest for freedom and just struggle to grasp their right to self-determination conferred by the United Nations Security Council in 1948. The human rights situation in Kashmir remains dire, while the Indian security forces weighed an undeclared war against innocent Kashmiris through unwarranted raid and search operations, arbitrary arrests, extra-judicial killings, use of pellet guns and unlawful coercion and torture, blocked of internet and restrictions on press, movement of the public, peaceful assembly and political activities. Thus, Kashmir has been presenting the scenes of a highly guarded open prison where inmates do not have even the basic rights and access to information, religious and political rituals etc.
Over the decades, Indian rulers not only betrayed the UNSC’s resolutions regarding the Kashmir dispute but intentionally introduced policies and implemented measures aimed at consolidating India’s unlawful control of the valley along with adding further complications to the issue making UNSC’s resolutions null and void. The major step in this regard was the Modi-led BJP Hindutva regime’s unlawful actions taken on August 5, 2019, and thereafter, which was a failed attempt to sabotage the Kashmir dispute by taking unilateral domestic constitutional and administrative measures. The Modi government revoked Article 370 and Section 35 of the Indian constitution to change the special status of Jammu and Kashmir which empowered the Modi government to allow Non-Kashmiris to get Kashmiri citizenry and property rights, change electoral constituencies and voter lists to change the demography of the disputed territory through biased and pre-planned illegal actions.
Unfortunately, 77 long and dark years have passed after Indian troops illegally occupied the Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir valley and an equal amount of time has passed that the Kashmiris are waiting for the implementation of the UNSC resolutions to resolve this dispute that has shaped into a grave humanitarian crisis over the past decades. In fact, the ploy of creating a conducive environment for a UN-sponsored plebiscite has caused an unprecedented lapse of time and complicated the issue as the status quo best serves the purpose of the occupier/ aggressor. It is high time that the government of Pakistan increases its pressure on India and the United Nations pressing them to fulfil their obligations under the UN charter regarding the Kashmir issue, so the dream of a free and prosperous Kashmir could be realized as early as possible.
