Early Times Report
JAMMU, Sept 28: Kashmiri Muslim leadership had been seeking to tell the international community that the movement which Kashmir witnessed after the killing of Burhan Wani was Kashmir-wide, but it was none other than the Pakistani Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif himself who punctured the Kashmiri balloon and told the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on September 22 that the area which was affected by the violent movement was not the whole of Kashmir but the area between Srinagar and Sopore.
"From Srinagar to Sopore, the men, women and children come out each day, defying curfew, to demand freedom. Pakistan fully supports the demand of the Kashmiri people for self-determination, as promised to them by several Security Council resolutions. Their struggle is a legitimate one for liberation from alien occupation. International law and the declarations of the United Nations on Self Determination, give the Kashmiri people the right to struggle for their freedom. Every year, the General Assembly unanimously adopts the resolution, which reaffirms 'the right of all people's to self-determination' and calls on the states concerned to immediately end their occupation and 'all acts of repression'.
On behalf of the Kashmiri people; on behalf of the mothers, wives, sisters, and fathers of the innocent Kashmiri children, women and men who have been killed, blinded and injured; on behalf of the Pakistani nation, I demand an independent inquiry into the extra-judicial killings, and a UN fact finding mission to investigate brutalities perpetrated by the Indian occupying forces, so that those guilty of these atrocities are punished," Sharif, among other things, said.
Sharif only helped India by suggesting that the whole of Jammu and Kashmir remained peaceful afterJuly 18 and that the only area which posed problem was the area between Srinagar and Sopore.
Remember, the area between Srinagar and Sopore doesn't constitute even half per cent of the state's land area. But more than that, this area by and large remained peaceful. It was South Kashmir, the stronghold of the PDP, which was on the boil after the death of Burhan Wani.
Notwithstanding the fact that Nawaz Sharief exposed himself by saying what he said, he, in the process, vindicated the nation that had all along held the view that only a small part of Kashmir Valley was the trouble spot. Indeed, it is parts of tiny Kashmir Valley which is the real trouble-spot. As for the rest of the state, there the people have nothing to do with the ongoing violent struggle. |
