Diplomatic Doings
By Dale Sprusansky
Masood Khan, the president of Azad Kashmir (the region of partitioned Kashmir administered by Pakistan) spoke at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC on Oct. 1. The leader of 4 million Kashmiris, Khan decried Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Aug. 5 decision to strip Indian-administered Kashmir, home to 12 million people, of its autonomy and integrate it into the Indian state.
“All these steps that were taken by India on Aug. 5 were illegal, unlawful and they violated international law, existing U.N. Security Council resolutions, international humanitarian law…ICC [International Criminal Court] statutes and customary international law,” Khan began.
The president did not mince his words, describing Delhi’s ongoing actions in Indian-administered Kashmir—including a communications blackout, a strict curfew, arrests of thousands of dissidents and plans to create Hindu settlements in the Muslim-majority region—as a genocide. “There’s a genocide going on there, and I choose the word very carefully and after ascertaining its legal validity,” Khan said. “There’s ethnic cleansing going on there. India is committing war crimes there.”
Khan described the decision to strip Indian-administered Kashmir of its autonomy as a progression of Modi’s Hindu nationalist campaign to vilify and incite violence against Muslims and other minorities. “This new doctrine of hatred reincarnating as fascism is an existential threat not only for the people of Kashmir and Pakistan, but also the people of India itself—Muslims, Christians Sikhs and other minorities,” Khan said. He described Modi’s policies as “violent extremism masquerading as respectable doctrine.”
(Prior to his election as prime minister in 2014, Modi was banned from entering the U.S. for nearly a decade due to his complicity in deadly riots targeting Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat, where he was chief minister.)
Khan said he is pleased to see that the ongoing situation in Kashmir is receiving abundant coverage from mainstream U.S. newspapers, a reality he believes is generating international support for the people of Kashmir. “For the first time India is being held accountable and its narratives are not being accepted, they are being challenged,” he said.
This global grassroots support, however, is not translating into firm action by governments. “The most powerful states in the world have been quiet and very cautious,” he said. “Most of them have been tight-lipped and their statements, even when they are supportive, they are ambivalent and they equivocate.” He called on the international community to “clearly declare the steps taken by India on Aug. 5 as illegal and… put pressure on India to reverse them.”
Going forward, Khan believes a solution to the long-standing Kashmir conflict can only be achieved through U.N.-mediated dialogue. “The bilateral negotiations between India and Pakistan have served no purpose whatsoever and therefore the best course of action is to go to multilateral diplomacy, to the United Nations Security Council,” he said.
Any future peace process must include Kashmiris and must provide a viable path to self-determination, Khan added. “No formula will work if you do not include Kashmiris in a diplomatic process to find that formula,” he said. “There should be no solution that does not reflect and represent the aspirations of the Kashmiris....We are going to get our freedom and our liberty and self-determination under all circumstances.”
