India exploited Covid-19 to change Kashmir's demography: Mazari tells UN
Minister for Human Rights Shireen Mazari on Wednesday said that India exploited the Covid-19 pandemic to accelerate the pace of annexation of occupied Jammu and Kashmir.
Addressing the 46th session of the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) through video-link, Mazari said: “India consolidated its illegal and unilateral actions of 5th August 2019 before the world.”
The minister said that the global human rights bodies presented a bleak picture of the so-called Indian secular state where the rights abuses and impunity are writ large, especially in occupied territories.
“Some of the leading human rights advocates continue to prioritise political, strategic and commercial interests over human rights values and principles,” she said. Mazari recalled that in 2020, she had presented before this forum the petition of the people of Kashmir where India is deploying unprecedented demographic engineering -- in violation of the 4th Geneva Convention -- to convert the Muslim majority into a minority in the occupied region.
Highlighting the Indian atrocities in occupied Kashmir, she said that over 3 million non-residents have been illegally granted residency in held valley, allowed permanent settlement, purchase of properties and lands, and permission to apply for local public jobs.
“India is usurping Kashmiri people’s inalienable right to self-determination in willful breach of the UN Charter, UN Security Council resolutions, and international law. This 'Final Solution', as the fascist BJP-RSS regime calls it, can be a major precursor to the genocide of Kashmiri people,” she said.
The Genocide Watch has already sounded the alarm bells. Eight million Kashmiris are caged up in one of the world’s largest concentration camps. Using draconian laws, she said, Indian forces have intensified systematic use of summary executions, torture, and en masse rapes as a weapon.
She said that hundreds of Kashmiri leaders, such as Asiya Andrabi, Shabbir Ahmed Shah, Yasin Malik, Masarat Alam Bhat, and journalists like Asif Sultan, remain imprisoned without any due legal process.
Shamelessly, Mazari said, the Indian forces are using ammunition including pellet gunshots, against peaceful protestors and even religious gatherings, as exemplified by pellet-firing on a Muharram procession in Srinagar in August 2020.
During staged encounters, houses and entire neighborhoods are being demolished to inflict collective punishment, even as affected families are left hapless at the mercy of the deadly pandemic.
She said that a pliant Indian judiciary is acting as a veritable arm of occupation as hundreds of habeas corpus petitions remain unheard before the courts.
Cowed by brave indigenous voices, Indian troops are gagging local media, harassing journalists, and carrying out reprisal attacks against human rights defenders, she observed.
"Even amidst the global health emergency, she said that arbitrary restrictions have not been eased out, infringing upon Kashmiri people’s fundamental rights to life, livelihoods, health and education.
Not a single member of Indian army personnel has so far been prosecuted for the widely documented human violations in the occupied territory, including the en masse rapes of women in the villages of Kunan and Poshpura in 1991 -- just one of the many such instances of the use of rape as a weapon by the occupying forces."
Pointing to UNHRC President Michelle Bachelet, she said that India’s credentials as purveyor of state terrorism and violator of human rights are wellestablished.
"Today, the parliaments across the world, global media, and civil society are calling out India for its industrial scale assaults on human rights and dignity of the Kashmiri people."
The world’s so-called largest democracy has earned the title of the most dangerous and violent country for minorities. The UN Security Council (UNSC) has met three times to consider the serious peace and security ramifications of India’s aggressive actions, she said.
"To divert global attention away from its atrocities in Kashmir, India has indulged in dangerous false flag operations in the nuclear environment of the subcontinent and peddled disinformation against Pakistan in this very Council and beyond."
The shocking revelations by the independent EU Disinfo Lab, in its second report namely “India Chronicles” and the Goswami WhatsApp leaks, have once again confirmed duplicity, deceit, and defiance of the fascist BJP-RSS regime, she said.
Last year, she said the leading UN Special Procedures described the situation in occupied Jammu and Kashmir “in free fall” and urged the international community to "step up". Since then, the situation has fallen further into a deep abyss and therefore meets any objective criteria of being a full-blown human rights crisis.
This UN must consider the Kashmir situation on its human rights merits, and not be influenced by geopolitical calculations, and bilateral economic interests vis-à-vis India. The two Kashmir Reports, issued by the High Commissioner in June 2018 and July 2019, present a clear roadmap, she recalled.
She informed the session about Pakistan’s efforts to support advance respect for universally agreed to values, rights, and freedoms and working for consensus-building, including adherence to the principles of impartiality, nondiscrimination, genuine dialogue and cooperation.