Reaffirming unwavering solidarity with the oppressed people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) the Pakistan Embassy organized a seminar titled “Longstanding, Unresolved and Unfinished Agenda: Important Aspects of the Kashmir Issue”
Diplomacy “the Only Way Forward” for Self-Determination of Kashmiris: Ambassador Rizwan Saeed Sheikh
By Elaine Pasquini
Washington: Kashmir Solidarity Day was commemorated at the Embassy of Pakistan on February 5, 2025, in solidarity with human rights advocates around the world to show support for the people of Jammu and Kashmir living under illegal Indian occupation and to honor those who have died attempting to free their homeland.
After the partition of British India in 1947, Kashmir was semi-autonomous, although administered by India from 1952 until 2019, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) revoked Article 370 of India’s constitution, which provided Kashmir its special autonomous status. Simultaneously, India deployed tens of thousands of troops to the region, instilled curfews, made random mass arrests, and placed other restrictions on the rights of Kashmiris. These illegal actions have increased during the past five years.
India controls approximately 55 percent of the area of the region that includes Jammu, the Kashmir Valley, and most of Ladakh – regions which represent approximately 70 percent of the population. Pakistan administers the states of Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.
Reaffirming unwavering solidarity with the oppressed people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) the Pakistan Embassy organized a seminar titled “Longstanding, Unresolved and Unfinished Agenda: Important Aspects of the Kashmir Issue.”
The event highlighted key legal, political, and security dimensions of this longstanding conflict to encourage the international community to explore viable pathways for resolution. It underscored India’s persistent refusal to honor its commitments as an occupier, the unfulfilled promises made to the people of Jammu and Kashmir by the global community, along with the implications of India’s illegal unilateral action in 2019 that further destabilized the region.
Attendees at the event included community members, Pakistani Americans – particularly from Azad, Jammu and Kashmir – along with media representatives and students from various universities across the Washington, DC area.
Special messages from Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, President Asif Ali Zardari and Deputy Prime Minister/Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein were read at the program followed by a documentary showcasing the struggle of the people of IIOJK.
In his address, Ambassador Rizwan Saeed Sheikh emphasized the significance of affording primacy to diplomacy in resolving global issues, including the longstanding Kashmir dispute.
“The durable settlement of the Kashmir issue and a hope for lasting peace can be best accomplished through diplomacy,” the ambassador said. “We need to create a situation where India and Pakistan can have a dialogue which is meaningful and consequential. That’s the only way forward,” he added.
Pointing out the common genesis of both the Kashmir and Palestine illegal occupations, Ambassador Sheikh urged the international community to refocus its attention and play a proactive role in resolving these long-standing conflicts.
“The situations in Palestine and Kashmir afford us this opportunity to accord them a similar status,” he said. “And if they are both taken together owing to a common genesis, each will reinforce or strengthen the other issue. The steps taken by the Indian government on and after August 5, 2019, are not legally tenable.”
In this context, the ambassador highlighted the relevance of United Nations Resolution 122 adopted on January 24, 1957, which reaffirmed the international nature of the Kashmir conflict and unambiguously pronounced that any unilateral action by either of the two parties to the dispute would not be a substitute to the prescribed solution of a UN-supervised plebiscite.
Ali Unar of Georgetown University Law School opined that, owing to the trust deficit between Pakistan and India, a multilateral solution should be reached through the involvement of other countries, the private sector, and the global business community.
Arif Hyder Ali, an attorney with 30 years of international dispute settlement work, suggested making a claim before the Conciliation Commission under the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Identifying significant challenges to the rule of law at the international level, he proposed that a claim could be lodged based on violations of the apartheid convention.
Mowahid Hussain Shah, attorney, author, and policy analyst, stressed that ideas and resistance can never be crushed and the spirit of freedom and the quest for the legitimate right to self-determination will live on through Yasin Malik, Shabbir Shah and Syed Ali Gillani, iconic leaders of Kashmir’s resistance movement.
Former Pakistani Ambassador Tauqir Hussain, now a professor at Georgetown University, pointed out that Kashmiris needed to make India’s unilateral actions of 2019 untenable for the Delhi government so that it is compelled to return to the negotiating table. India and Pakistan, he insisted, must find a way to give Kashmiris their right to self-determination through mutual negotiations.
Lars Rise, a former Norwegian member of Parliament, asserted that India was committing war crimes in IIOJK. He stressed that India’s human rights violations should be documented and included in the foreign policy advocacy of major world capitals.
Muhammad Yasin, president of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Azad, Jammu, Kashmir, highlighted the efforts to draw attention of the international community to the longstanding suffering of Kashmiris in IIOJK.
In conclusion, Ambassador Sheikh thanked the participants, especially the students whose presence and active participation enriched the event.
(Elaine Pasquini is a freelance journalist. Her reports appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs and Nuze.Ink.)
