UN should set up commission to probe Indian atrocities in Kashmir: Lodhi

NEW YORK (92 News) – Pakistan has renewed its call for the United Nations to set up a inquiry commission the world body's highest-level probe to investigate the grave human rights violations in Indian-held Jammu Kashmir (IHK). The call was renewed by Pakistan’s ambassador to UN Maleeha Lodhi while speaking in a debate on Self Determination in the Third Committee of the UN’s 193-member General Assembly. The report issued on Kashmir by the UN High Commissioner of Human Rights in June 2018 had made a recommendation for such an inquiry. “We endorse the report’s recommendation that a UN Inquiry Commission be constituted to investigate and redress the violations of human rights of the Kashmiri people”, the Pakistani envoy said. Speaking in the Third Committee of the General Assembly on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, the Pakistani ambassador to UN Maleeha Lodhi said that India’s consistent denial of the Kashmiri right to self-determination is a telling example of Indian impunity. She said that the latest report of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had lifted the veil from decades of obfuscation by India of massive human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. She said when the Kashmiri people demand the right of self-determination promised to them by several Security Council resolutions, they are met with repression and ruthless human rights abuses at the hands of Indian occupying forces. Ambassador Lodhi said at the UN forum that the aspirations of the Kashmiri people to exercise their right to self-determination would have been fulfilled decades ago, had India not brutally suppressed their legitimate struggle. She said that the right of self-determination was promised to the people of Jammu and Kashmir by UN Security Council as well as by the governments of India and Pakistan. But instead, India had unleashed a reign of terror to crush the will of the Kashmiri people.