World must help Kashmir

INDIA – where more than half the population do not have adequate food supplies, shelter, clothing and basic health care – is spending an enormous portion of its resources on their military confrontation.

The main, if not the only, cause of over half a century of confrontation is the unsettled status of Kashmir.

As a consequence of this confrontation, the people of Kashmir are denied the basic human right to control their lives in freedom and democracy. The people of Kashmir are oppressed.

If continued, this oppression, and the resulting violence in Kashmir, can escalate into larger-scale warfare, like the intractable nightmare we have now in the Middle East, and even a nuclear holocaust.

The world community has a responsibility to prevent a nuclear-laden country from driving into extinction one-fifth of humanity living in South Asia.

The world community did not allow apartheid to be perpetuated in South Africa or allow Indonesia to rule East Timor by force. Turning a blind eye to these lessons of history will only result in an escalation of Kashmir’s already bloody situation.

There are many other costs: some measurable in currency – like the money spent on defence, destruction of property, loss of foreign investment – and other costs not measurable in hard currency, the brunt of which is borne by the people of Kashmir: the degradation of the environment, loss of life, and the misery and poverty of refugees.

The people of Kashmir, all of them, are denied their human dignity and basic human rights.

The people of Kashmir must be central to the resolution of the conflict.

The Kashmir conflict is not a border dispute or a debate over secular or theocratic government; it is about the fundamental human rights of the Kashmir people to decide their own future.

The people of Kashmir are denied their human dignity

Sherwood, Durban