India flayed for ‘mass blinding’ of Kashmiris

new york — Pakistan told the UN on Monday that India’s use of pellet guns against peaceful protesters in Indian-controlled Kashmir has left many young Kashmiris blinded, saying the move amounted to “first mass blinding in human history.”

Speaking in the General Assembly’s Special Political and Decolonisation (Fourth) Committee, Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi also said the UN’s decolonisation agenda would remain incomplete without settling the Kashmir dispute on the basis of Security Council resolutions that pledged the right of self-determination to the Kashmiri people.

She emphasised that implementation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the decolonisation agenda was not limited to the issue of Non-Self-Governing Territories, but also encompassed other peoples living under alien occupation.

“Our aim therefore should be to ensure that all peoples under colonial administration or foreign occupation are allowed to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination,” the Pakistani envoy said.

The Kashmiri people, she said, were still waiting for the Organisation to fulfil its promise to hold a United Nations-supervised plebiscite that would enable them to determine their own political destiny.

“This represents the most persistent failure of the United Nations,” Ambassador Lodhi told delegates.

By use of force and fraud, India had prevented the people of Jammu and Kashmir from exercising their fundamental right to self-determination, she recalled, pointing out that it had deployed tens of thousands of troops to suppress the freedom struggle there.

Accusing India of indulging in “worst form of state terrorism”, the Pakistani envoy said the use of pellet guns against unarmed peaceful protesters had blinded and maimed for life a generation of young Kashmiris. “This has been aptly described as the first mass blinding in human history”.

Contrary to India’s claims, Jammu and Kashmir had never been and never could be an integral part of that country, Ambassador Lodhi asserted.