New York–Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Wednesday met the editorial board of New York Times and reiterated his demand that the international community should play a role for the resolution of the Kashmir issue.
During the meeting, Imran Khan apprised the editorial board of “Indian atrocities” in the Kashmir, and said the Indian actions have “put the peace of the region at stake”.
He said there is a “fear of bloodshed in occupied Kashmir and to prevent this situation, the international community must take immediate action”.
The NYT has been writing pieces sympathetic to the Pakistani stand on Kashmir.
Imran had also written an opinion piece in the paper late last month urging the international community to “think beyond trade and business advantages” and warned of a looming threat of nuclear war due to “appeasement” of India.
In a piece titled “The World Can’t Ignore Kashmir. We Are All in Danger”, Khan says that “if the world does nothing to stop the Indian assault on Kashmir and its people, two nuclear-armed states will get ever closer to a direct military confrontation”.
Separately, while addressing the delegation of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Contact Group on the sidelines of the UNGA, Imran wondered how the world community would have reacted if eight million Europeans or Jews were put under siege, and said he was “disappointed” with the lack of response from the international community over Kashmir.
“(I am) disappointed by the international community. If eight million Europeans or Jews or even eight Americans were put under siege, would the reaction have been the same? There’s no pressure yet on Prime Minister Narendra Modi to lift the siege. We’ll keep putting the pressure… What are 9,00,000 troops doing there? Once the curfew is lifted, god knows what is going to happen after that,” the PM stated.
“Modi has been committing terrorism in occupied Kashmir where children, elders among other people have been besieged from the last 52 days [a] all communication services are shut down,” he went on to say, adding that freedom fighters have been termed as “terrorists”.
Khan said if Kashmiris fight for their right, “it is called terrorism and they are being oppressed because they are Muslims [a] we have to awaken the international community.”
He said that under the curfew there was an imminent risk of genocide of Kashmiri Muslims and that the atrocities being witnessed in the valley were never happened in the past.
The prime minister said minorities including Muslims and Christians were not safe and they were being treated as inferior citizens.
The event was also attended by Foreign Ministers of Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Azerbaijan.
Responding to why Pakistan’s narrative on Kashmir is being overlooked, he said: “The reason is India, people look upon India as a market of 1.2 billion people… Some are appalled by it but by the end of it, they think of it as a market,” he said. (IANS)
