Only Kashmiris can decide their future, India told

The JI leadership had announced the march from Rawalpindi up to the Indian High Commission to register a protest against killings over 75 Kashmiris in recent days but the protesters were stopped by the Islamabad Police about one-and-a-half kilometer short of the Diplomatic Enclave. They are being killed.

Nawaz Sharif, while addressing a public gathering on Friday after his party’s victory in Azad Jammu and Kashmir (Pakistan administered part of Kashmir) elections, said: “We are waiting for the day Kashmir becomes Pakistan”. While reiterating his condemnation over the “continuous Indian oppression”, Prime Minister Sharif said “brutal use of force was a blatant violation of fundamental rights of the Kashmiri people which no civilised society permits”.

It said that raising slogans “that sour Pakistan’s already precarious relationship with its neighbour (India) is not a solution that could work in either short or long run”.

The meeting demanded ban on the use of pellet guns by the Indian troops in the Valley for dispersing people exercising their right to protest. “But I would like to repeat that this dream of Pakistan will never be fulfilled”, she said.

She also condemned Nawaz Sharif’s condemnation of separatist commander Burhan Wani’s murder and asked him why he described Wani as a martyr despite knowing that he was a part of the “terrorist group” Hizbul Mujahideen.

Ms. Swaraj said that even more condemnable than these “deplorable attempts” from across the border to incite violence and glorify terroristsis the fact that these attempts had been undertaken by Pakistan’s state machinery in active partnership with UN-designated terrorist Hafiz Saeed and other leading terrorists belonging to internationally proscribed organisations. “Country which used fighter planes & artillery against its own people has no right whatsoever to point a finger against our security forces”, said Swaraj.

Amid a war of words, Pakistan said any verdict on the future of Kashmir can only be given by the Kashmiri people, a day after New Delhi made it clear that the whole of Jammu and Kashmir belongs to India and will never become part of Pakistan.

“People of Jammu and Kashmir will fight for progress, development and democracy. You will never be able to make this heaven on earth a terror hell”, she said.