Ambassador of Pakistan to Republic of Azerbaijan Bilal Hayee has issued a statement on a resolution adopted on January 5, 1949, by the United Nations Commission on India and Pakistan (UNCIP) that guarantees a free and fair plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir to enable the Kashmiri people to realize their right to self-determination.
Report informs, the statement reads:
"Today is January 5. For many, it is simply a day marking the beginning of work/ school after the New Year holidays. But January 5 also has immense historical and legal significance.
It was on January 5, 1949, when the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) adopted the historic resolution that guarantees a 'free and fair plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir' to enable the Kashmiri people to realize their right to self-determination.
The United Nations Security Council established the UNCIP in January 1948 to investigate and mediate Jammu and Kashmir's dispute between Pakistan and India.
Since the people of Jammu and Kashmir are still awaiting the realization of their promised right to self-determination, they commemorate January 5 every year as a day to remind the international community of the latter's unfilled promise.
Today is the 72nd anniversary of this sacred promise awaiting to become a reality. The right to self-determination is a vital component of the human dignity around which the whole edifice of international human rights and international humanitarian law is built. The negation of this right is the negation of human freedom, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Human Rights Covenants.
Let us not forget that in the post-colonial era, the realization of this inalienable right paved the way for the successful culmination of freedom struggles in different parts of the world, including in South and West Asia as well as Africa. Let us also not forget that India's occupying forces are the main impediment in realizing the right to self-determination for the people of Kashmir, a promise India agreed to honor on the platform of the United Nations multiple times.
Instead of showing some integrity and courage to fulfill its international obligation towards the people of Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian Government has created an environment of fear and chaos since August 5, 2019 by illegal and unilateral actions, including the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that guaranteed special status to Jammu and Kashmir and annexing it with India.
After the repealing of article 370 in violation of the UN Security Council Resolutions, the BJP Government put the Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir under a prolonged lockdown. Millions of Kashmiris have been confined to their homes, while thousands have been arrested and hundreds killed indiscriminately or subjected to enforced disappearance. Continued curfew, restrictions on the rights to movement, assembly, and repeated violations of the right to practice faith with impunity in the Illegally Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJ&K) have made the lives of Kashmiri people like living hell.
Hundreds of thousands of foreign settlers have been brought to reside in the Indian Illegal Occupied Kashmir to change the demographic composition of this Muslim majority state. Today, the complete absence of fundamental freedoms in the IIOJ&K has challenged the international community's conscience. Indian actions have been widely rejected by various Parliaments and Governments, the United Nations, and international human rights organizations.
Since August 2019, the UN Security Council has held discussions on Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir's situation three times, an unprecedented move in the last fifty years. The multiple sessions in the Security Council are a rejection of India's claim that Kashmir is its internal matter. Rather, this is a vindication that Jammu and Kashmir is an internationally recognized dispute concerning the right to self-determination. There is no denying the fact that Jammu and Kashmir dispute is a flashpoint in South Asia as it involves two nuclear-armed arch-rivals, Pakistan and India.
The people of Pakistan have always stood by the people of Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir in their legitimate struggle for self-determination. No matter how long it takes the conscience of the world to awaken and honor the promise made to the people of Kashmir, Pakistan will never let the Kashmiri people down."