Turkey’s Istanbul: A seminar titled “Why Kashmiris Must Get Their Right to Self-Determination?” was hosted by the “Post-Colonial Studies Application and Research Center” (PAMER) of Uskudar University, Istanbul.
For its work in neurobiology, cognitive medicine, and brain research, Üsküdar University was named a “Center of Excellence” by UNESCO in 2018.
Dr. Ghulam N. Mir, Chairman of the Kashmir Diaspora Coalition and President of the World Kashmir Awareness Forum, and Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Chairman of the World Forum for Peace and Justice, both spoke at the conference.
Dr. Fehmi Agca from the Uskudar University’s Department of Political Science and International Relations served as the seminar’s emcee. One of the University’s most distinguished professors, Dr. Fehmi is the author of more than a dozen works, including “International Cooperation on Law against Terrorism.”
According to Dr. Fehmi, Kashmir is one of the oldest unresolved conflicts on the UN Security Council’s agenda. The people of Kashmir are in need, and it is our duty to inform the international community of their predicament. We are aware that other conflict zones have adopted UN resolutions; why not in Kashmir? Kashmir merits consideration on a global scale.
In contrast to depriving the people of Kashmir of the right to self-determination that had been promised to them by the United Nations Security Council as early as 1948, according to Dr. Ghulam N. Mir, the Indian government has also perpetrated war crimes in Kashmir.
A plebiscite in Kashmir has been called for in numerous UN resolutions, but none of them have been put into effect because of India’s stubbornness. With forced demographic change and the granting of citizenship to millions of Indian Hindus, Dr. Mir claimed and added that Kashmir has evolved into a settler colonial project of India. The inflow of tourists and settlers has gravely harmed Kashmir’s ecosystem and environment, and creative Kashmiris have been denied access to employment and educational opportunities, he claimed.
According to the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP), located in Srinagar, more than 8,000 men vanished in the area between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, according to Dr. Mir. The Kashmiri civil society came up with the moniker “Half-Widows” for these women who spent decades waiting for their husbands in ambiguity because the men were not officially deemed dead.
Dr. Mir commended the Erdogan administration for making Kashmir a priority in its foreign policy. Turkey is one of the few nations that has consistently pushed for Kashmir’s rights at the UN.
The right of peoples to self-determination, according to Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, is a fundamental tenet of the United Nations Charter that has been reaffirmed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the International Covenants on Civil and Political Rights (the ICCPR), and the International Covenants on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (the ICESCR), as well as repeatedly used to resolve numerous international conflicts. Finally, the United Nations’ founding in 1945 gave the notion of self-determination a new meaning.Along with achieving equal rights for all nations, it was included to the list of goals the UN will pursue. One of the goals of the UN is to “promote good relations among nations based on respect for the concept of equal rights and self-determination of peoples,” according to Article 1.2 of the UN Charter.
The International Court of Justice took into account the various resolutions on the process of decolonization and stated: “The subsequent development of International Law in regard to non-self-governing territories as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations made the principle of self-determination applicable to all of them. This viewpoint defines self-determination as the fundamental tenet of the decolonization process, Dr. Fai continued.
The maintenance of international peace and security and the idea of self-determination are mutually exclusive, according to Dr. Fai. For instance, the denial of the right to self-determination to the Kashmiri people has put India and Pakistan, two South Asian neighbours, on the verge of a nuclear war.
He said that the United Nations had expressly acknowledged the applicability of the principle of self-determination to the particular issue of Jammu and Kashmir. When the Kashmir conflict was brought before the Security Council in 1948, both India and Pakistan defended it. Jammu and Kashmir was not a part of either country’s territory when India and Pakistan were established as sovereign states, so the two nations came to an agreement to permit its citizens to exercise their right to self-determination under neutral supervision and without being subjected to coercion from either side.
“Thus, despite the fact that its legitimacy has never been recognised, India’s occupation of Kashmir has gone unchallenged by the international world. But the Kashmiri people have never indicated that they are at peace with it. It is necessary to ask where to start when establishing a fair and long-lasting basis. The United Nations Charter, which states in its very first article that “respect for the principles of equal rights and self-determination of peoples” is the apparent answer, as well as the international agreements between India and Pakistan, Fai remarked.
Dr. Fai forewarned that even in the violent world of today, the behaviour of the Indian occupation rule in Kashmir is exceptional since it has enjoyed complete immunity. At the important capitals of the globe, not a single word of protest has been spoken, not even a request that India stop its nearly genocidal campaign.
In accordance with Article 99 of the United Nations Charter, he made an appeal to the Secretary General of the organisation to take action in Kashmir. mainly because systematic, intentional, and publicly recognised human rights violations are taking place in Kashmir. In order to stifle the widespread movement for fundamental human rights and human dignity, India has granted its occupying forces in Kashmir the authority to use lethal force against the local populace and the freedom to treat them badly in any way.
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