AMSTERDAM: Hashim Qureshi has severely criticized the violations of human rights by Indian security forces in Indian occupied Kashmir and says that pushing the Kashmiris to the wall by using rape, torture, custodial deaths as weapons to suppress the will of the people would not succeed,

Qureshi said that the only policy India had in regard to Kashmir was to kill people and bludgeon them into submission.

“You have put up statues of Mahatma Gandhi everywhere, but India does not follow his path of nonviolence and brotherhood, that is India’s tragedy and that is why it is losing respect in the eyes of the world,” said the pacifist.

He vehemently disagrees that the holding of eight elections in Jammuand Kashmir had once and for all settled the issue of accession of Kashmir to India. “Those elections were only for choosing the local government. In those elections, there was no option given to the people as to whether they wished to live with India or with Pakistan or be independent,” Qureshi said.

Had that option been given, he continued, then India could have claimed rightfully that Kashmir was an integral part of India. But this was not the situation now. The people of Kashmir wanted azadi and khud mukhtiari (internal sovereignty). The basic question of self-determination remained unresolved because that choice was not offered to the Kashmiri people, he said.

Condemning the siege of Hazratbal shrine in Srinagar, he said that attacking the Golden Temple complex in Ammtsar in 1984 had only embittered the Sikhs. That was a wrong decision. Then there was the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Dec.1992, and now yet another shrine had come into focus. This too would be a wrong decision if the Indian army was to mount an assault on the shrine.

First Party Qureshi strongly refuted the contention of the Union home minister, S.B.Chavan, that Kashmir cannot be a third party in Indo Pak bilateral talks to resolve the Kashmir dispute, “We are not a third party, We are the first party,” he asserted. By talking of just two parties and India wanting Kashmir representatives to talk through them indicated a process of thinking wherein some “give and take” could take place and Kashmir could be further divided. How could the Kashmiris accept this and how would solve the problem he asked. “Then there will be no peace there as there can bono solution without the participation of the people of Kashmir,” hesitated. “I don’t think that Pakistan is a friend of Kashmir people. I salute them for playing intelligently on the movement of the Kashmiri people.

Article extracted from this publication >>  October 29, 1993