ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: Pakistan has completely rejected the baseless Indian contentions regarding alleged damage to the Buddhist cultural heritage in Gilgit-Baltistan, terming them preposterous and part of Indian leadership’s unrelenting anti-Pakistan propaganda.
“The Indian allegations are contrary to the historical facts, international law, and relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions,” said a statement issued by the Foreign Office in Islamabad on Thursday.
The statement said that Jammu and Kashmir is a disputed territory recognized as such by the International Community.
It said that the dispute is the longest outstanding item on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) which remains unresolved due to forcible, brutal, and illegal occupation of a part of Jammu and Kashmir by India since 1947.
The regurgitation of false and preposterous Indian claims does not change the disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir, it added.
The statement further said that with its tarnished human rights record in Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOJ&K) and abdication of responsibility to protect its minorities from Hindu extremists, the RSS-BJP government has no credentials whatsoever even to feign concern for minorities, either at home or elsewhere.
It said that India’s state terrorism and extra judicial killings in fake encounters in IOJ&K, vandalization and destruction of minorities’ places of worship including the historic Babri Mosque, lynchings by cow vigilantes under government’s watch, Gujarat massacre of 2002 and targeted killings of Muslims in Delhi in February 2020, and rendering millions of people stateless with discriminatory steps such as NRC are well documented by international human rights and humanitarian organisations.
Rather than pretending concerns for minorities beyond its borders, it is time for Indian leadership to do serious introspection and take requisite steps to safeguard and protect the lives, rights and places of workshop of minorities in India.
The Foreign Office said that India must realize that its baseless contentions about Gilgit-Baltistan cannot divert international attention away from the Jammu & Kashmir dispute and the need for its immediate resolution in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council Resolutions and aspirations of Kashmiri people.
It said that till the implementation of UN Security Council Resolutions through a free and impartial plebiscite under the UN auspices, no illegal and unilateral action or repetition of false claims by India can alter the disputed status of Jammu and Kashmir.
