Kashmiri Leaders Invited To OIC Meeting Despite India’s protests

Pakistan has turned down India’s protests on inviting the Kashmiri leadership to attend the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation meeting in Islamabad on March 22 and 23, which would be held in Islamabad.

Jammu and Kashmir do not fall inside India’s ‘internal matter’. India’s Foreign Office issued a statement on Thursday stating that “many resolutions of the United Nations Security Council on the Jammu and Kashmir dispute declare that a free and impartial plebiscite will be held under the UN’s auspices to determine the final disposition of Jammu and Kashmir,” according to Foreign Office spokesperson Ravi Agrawal.

The OIC Council of Foreign Ministers’ 48th Session will be held in Islamabad on March 22-23, 2022, at Pakistan’s invitation.

Despite India’s repeated claims to the contrary, “repression and occupation” in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir cannot be “obfuscated.”

According to the UN, the right of all peoples to self-determination should be universally recognised. As per the statement, the UN Security Council and the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation have recognised this right for the people of Jammu and Kashmir, who have lived under Indian control since 1947.

Thus, the OIC has backed the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination and has routinely invited Kashmiri representatives to attend OIC meetings. In a news conference on March 15, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi expressed similar concerns.

To ensure that the “real representatives” of the Kashmiri people may attend the OIC meeting, Pakistan urged India not to “create barriers.”

Indian authorities should instead “reflect within,” and “end its repression” in Kashmir, “and let the oppressed Kashmiri people exercise their right to self-determination under the relevant UN Security Council resolutions,” according to the OIC’s stance on the Kashmiri people.

The Kashmir issue was also brought up by Pakistan’s UN Permanent Mission, which urged that India stop its claimed state terror against Pakistan, Kashmiris, and other minorities in the country.

“India has a responsibility to put UNSC decisions into action. That it has refused for seven decades is a flagrant and ongoing breach of the Security Council resolutions and the UN Charter,” Saima Saleem, the counsellor, had emphasised as much in her speech.