United Nations Security Council is to discuss India’s decision to revoke the special status of Jammu and Kashmir on Friday.
Request was made by Pakistan and backed by China asking for the body to meet behind closed doors on Thursday or Friday, diplomats said.
France, however, proposed that the discussion should be in a less formal manner - known as “any other business”.
It will be up to Poland, president of the council for August, to mediate an agreed time and format among the 15 members.
On Aug 5; India unilaterally withdrew Article 370, prohibiting the right of the state of Jammu and Kashmir to frame its own laws, and allowed non-residents to buy property there. Telephone lines, internet and television networks have been blocked and there are restrictions on movement and assembly.
Pakistan responded to these changes, and requested UN Security Council to intervene.
“Pakistan will not provoke a conflict. But India should not mistake our restraint for weakness,” Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi wrote in a letter to the Security Council on Tuesday. “If India chooses to resort again to the use of force, Pakistan will be obliged to respond, in self-defense, with all its capabilities.”
Accordng to Reuters, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called on India and Pakistan to refrain from any steps that could affect the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. Guterres also said he was concerned about reports of restrictions on the Indian side of Kashmir.
The U.N. Security Council adopted several resolutions in 1948 and in the 1950s on the dispute between India and Pakistan over the region, including one which says a plebiscite should be held to determine the future of the mostly Muslim Kashmir.
Another resolution also calls upon both sides to “refrain from making any statements and from doing or causing to be done or permitting any acts which might aggravate the situation.”
U.N. peacekeepers have been deployed since 1949 to observe a ceasefire between India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir.
Human rights organisations have claimed constant human rights abuses in Jammu and Kashmir, a disputed territory administered by India, including mass killings, forced disappearances, torture, rape and sexual abuse for political repression and suppression of freedom of speech.
UN human rights report on Kashmir in June 2018 has called for international inquiry into ongoing human rights violations and abuses in Jammu and Kashmir.
According to Rights Groups referred in Wikipedia; about “100,000 people have died since 1989 while the official figures from Indian sources state the estimates of number of civilians killed due to the insurgency in the range of 16,725 to 47,000”
The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), in its Foreign Ministers Meet in March 2019, adopted a resolution on Jammu and Kashmir, condemning the “atrocities and human rights violations” in the state.
The resolution on Kashmir used phrases such as “Indian terrorism” and “mass blindings” by Indian security forces on protesting youths.
