Call for Breaking Silence

Dr Attiq-ur-Rehman

Pakistan annually observes Kashmir Solidarity Day on February 5th to show internationally its determination to support a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue while preventing the overwhelming wave of massive human rights abuses. Human rights abuses have become a critical part of Muslim society living in Indian occupational areas where people are suffering due to their rising demands for securing the right to self-determination.

Pakistan annually observes Kashmir Solidarity Day to reaffirm its unwavering support for the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination.

Pakistan’s support to the Kashmir struggle to gain independence from the furious Indian occupation has become an essential feature of South Asian regional politics, where New Delhi is committed to monopolizing its position while inflicting a sense of insecurity in territorially adjoining nations. The clash over Kashmir validates Indian ferocious South Asian regional politics, where Pakistan has, on several occasions, proposed peaceful solutions to the protracted regional issues.

In response to such attributes of Indian South Asian engagement, the government of Pakistan has activated its diplomatic forces around the globe to highlight the sufferings of Kashmiri people at various platforms of international organizations, human rights councils, and its bilateral dealings with other nations. The diplomatic exertion of Pakistan amplifies internationally its position on the Kashmir issue under the UN resolutions, and major human rights organizations of the world have verified Islamabad’s position on the human rights violations of Kashmiri society.     

Thus, Solidarity Day is generally annually marked by arranging several peaceful rallies, public awareness seminars, and cultural activities to echo internationally the miserable picture of humanity being portrayed by Indian security forces in Kashmir. The informal intellectual conversations and formal academic debates on this day further exhibit the inseparable connections of Pakistani society with the Kashmiri issue, which is commonly known as the “unfinished agenda of partition” and an awful picture of colonial imprints in the South Asian subcontinent.

Parallel to keeping in mind the rise of this issue from the ashes of the British colonial empire, Islamabad plays its vital role on certain rational grounds consisting of its emphasis on the promotion of fundamental principles of justice in Kashmir under the auspices of international law and UN Charter. Islamabad’s standing on the issue is primarily inherited in its support of the right of self-determination according to the United Nations Resolutions, in which the focus of this intergovernmental platform was on the imposition of an impartial plebiscite in Kashmir.

The support for the UN-proposed solution to the problem concentrates on the local Kashmir people trying to ensure their right to decide their future based on the impartial plebiscite and for the acquisition of desired productive outcomes cemented in peaceful approaches of the international community. These peaceful approaches support Islamabad’s consistency in advocating the peaceful resolution of the Kashmir issue, which is directly linked with the elimination of New Delhi’s imposed reign of terror in the South Asian region based on its strategic illusion of becoming a hegemonic nation through several vicious policies.

Contrasting New Delhi, Islamabad’s determination to integrate peaceful values into the long-term solution of the Kashmir dispute primarily seeks to achieve a close political engagement with New Delhi cemented in meaningful dialogues in which the issue causing two-sided formal inflexibilities could be negotiated. The mainstream political authorities from Islamabad heavily believe that the quest to implement a peaceful solution to the Kashmir issue is not purely linked with its conflicted territorial status between India and Pakistan, but will create a peaceful Kashmiri society with respect to the fundamental values of human rights.

Islamabad actively engages in diplomatic efforts to highlight human rights violations in Indian-occupied Kashmir at international forums.

The two-sided contesting government authorities have made it a humanitarian catastrophe as the consequence of New Delhi’s conversation of its occupied Kashmiri areas into highly militarized zones. These militarised zones have become the epicenters of massive human rights violations, mainly consisting of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, sexual harassment, public imprisonment, and massive torture. Additionally, the imposition of strict communication barriers and the continuation of a months-long curfew have raised the crucial positions of various human rights organizations on the multiplying tendencies of New Deli’s Kashmir-centric atrocities.     

In this way, Islamabad-based political authorities strongly believe that the active role of the international community could play an effective role with the support of Pakistan’s diplomatic cooperation in the region. Through observing the annual Kashmir Solidarity Day, Islamabad recalls its long-standing struggle for the unresolved Kashmir issue, which has become a gravitational point of South Asian regional politics. Its annual commemoration is not merely restricted to the symbolic association of the Pakistani nation with the Kashmir Muslims.

However, it shows a profound expression of Islamabad’s unconditional commitment to sensitize the international community about one of the leading protracted interstate territorial issues of modern political history. Islamabad’s concentration on the international community has proved that the annual observance of Solidarity Day for Kashmiri people shows the consistent focus of Pakistan’s government on the Kashmiri cause. Islamabad’s formal emphasis on the suffering of the Kashmiri Muslim population under occupational control of New Delhi’s deployed security forces highlights the growing voices of Kashmiri people seeking justice from the leading champions of human rights.

In this scenario, the greater responsibility lies on the major powers, and the leaders of major powers could play an effective role while adopting an impartial and pragmatic approach. Besides continuing their multi-layered collaborative engagements with New Delhi, the states committed to global advocacy for human rights could understand the significance of Islamabad’s call to address the Kashmir issue beyond traditional fixed frameworks of implementing the UN resolutions in the targeted areas.

The global community must adopt an impartial approach to address the Kashmir conflict and support peace and justice in South Asia.

Global support for the Kashmir-centric UN resolutions could adequately prevent the prevailing injustice in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) parallel to supporting the scope of peace and justice in South Asia.

The author is an Assistant Professor at, the Department of International Relations, NUML, Islamabad. (arehman@numl.edu.pk). https://www.numl.edu.pk/faculty/446