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ISLAMABAD: Pakistan on Friday “categorically rejected” India’s remarks regarding upcoming elections in Gilgit-Baltistan (GB), calling them “baseless” and part of a “carefully choreographed attempt to conflate fact with fiction”.
General elections in GB are scheduled for Sunday (June 7), after a four-month delay attributed to harsh winter weather. The PPP and other political parties have staged a series of rallies across the region and ramped up efforts to garner support ahead of the polls.
In a statement, Foreign Office (FO) Spokesperson Tahir Andarabi said India remained in “illegal occupation of the internationally recognised disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir,” and termed New Delhi a “global leader in propagating fake narratives and tendentious propaganda”.
“We unequivocally reject this latest Indian rhetoric with the contempt it deserves,” the statement said.
New Delhi, in a statement issued by its foreign ministry earlier on Friday, objected to the upcoming elections in GB, claiming that “the entire Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, including the so-called ‘Gilgit-Baltistan’, are integral and inalienable parts of India”.
Reiterating Islamabad’s position, the FO said the Jammu and Kashmir dispute was the longest unresolved item on the UN Security Council agenda and originated from India’s “forcible and unlawful occupation” of the state in 1947.
The only just and durable settlement, it added, lay in implementing relevant UNSC resolutions guaranteeing the Kashmiri people their “inalienable right to self-determination through a free and impartial plebiscite under UN auspices”.
The statement further said that said India’s “unfounded assertions” on GB could not divert attention from “grave and systematic human rights violations” in India-occupied Kashmir.
The FO elaborated that Indian forces enjoy impunity under “draconian laws” and termed it “state terrorism” against unarmed Kashmiris.
Pakistan called on India to vacate all occupied territories, reverse “all illegal and unilateral actions” taken in occupied Kashmir since August 5, 2019, and repeal draconian laws.
Islamabad also urged New Delhi to allow access to neutral observers, international human rights and humanitarian organisations, and the international media to ascertain the situation on the ground.
“India must also enable the Kashmiri people to exercise their right to self-determination in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions,” the statement read.
Earlier this year, a minister of the caretaker setup in the region, Ghulam Abbas, rejected what he termed Indian propaganda, saying the people of GB have always been loyal to Pakistan and have consistently struggled to become a formal part of the country.
Speaking at the ‘Meet the Press’ programme at the National Press Club, it was highlighted that Gilgit-Baltistan separated from India without major violence, as the people of the region voluntarily chose to hoist the Pakistani flag.
“The Indian propaganda and the statements of Narendra Modi claiming that the people of GB are protesting against Pakistan to join India have become a laughing stock in the region,” Abbas said, adding that “this narrative is not even being accepted by the international community.”
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