ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Thursday said that the international community must grill India for the continued sufferings of the Kashmiri people.
“The world needs to tell India that enough is enough,” he said at the International Parliamentary Seminar on Kashmir organised by the Young Parliamentarians Forum in collaboration with the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
Nawaz said Pakistan would continue to support the struggle of Kashmiris for their right to self-determination.
“The voices of Kashmiri people for their freedom cannot be silenced by the gunfire’s of Indian security forces,” he said. He termed Kashmir an integral part of Pakistan’s identity and said, “Our hearts beat in sync with Kashmiri brethren and we rejoice in their happiness and gloom”.
He said that supporting the just struggle of the Kashmiris is an article of faith for every Pakistani.
He said that Pakistan would always extend moral, political and diplomatic support to Kashmiris. The Prime Minister urged the international community to fulfil its 70-year-old promise with Kashmiris to implement the resolutions of Untied Nations Security Council that recognised the right of the Kashmiris.
He said the Kashmiri youth were writing a new chapter of their freedom struggle following the killing of Burhan Wani. Nawaz said Pakistan would highlight the Kashmir issue at every international forum and mentioned that the government had recently sent lawmakers as its envoys overseas to apprise their counterparts about the plight of the Kashmiris.
He quoted American leader Martin Luther King Junior as saying, “History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamour of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people.” He said Pakistan desired peaceful relations with all neighbours.
He recalled his four-point agenda presented on United Nation General Assembly’s platform that encompassed solution to the Kashmir issue.
Nawaz in September 2015 had proposed four points that included respecting 2003 understanding of ceasefire in Kashmir and at the Line of Control, restraining threat of use of force, demilitarisation of Kashmir and troop withdrawal from Siachen.
Azad Jammu Kashmir President Masood Khan and Prime Minister Raja Farooq Haider were among the participants of the seminar that gathered scholars from Europe and North America.
National Assembly Speaker Ayaz Sadiq in his speech said parliament had passed over a dozen resolutions in support of the Kashmiris.
He said the Kashmiris were facing the brutalities of genocide, detentions, murders and fake encounters and mentioned that more than 6,000 people in the valley suffered pellet gun injuries. He said Kashmir remained a bone of contention between Pakistan and India, adding that the latter had been disproportionately spending on defence.
