PM refused to condemn Uri attack despite US, UK prodding

ISLAMABAD: Following the Uri attack, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was asked by the US and the UK to condemn the attack as well as the killing of 18 Indian soldiers but he flatly refused to do so.

Instead, both the influential western capitals were made speechless when countered with the question over the silence of world conscience, including that of London and Washington, with respect to the killing of more than 100 Kashmiris and injuries to thousands more during the recent months in Indian-held Kashmir (IHK) by the Indian forces.

Sources told The News that at the sidelines meetings with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during the recent UN General Assembly session, the Pakistani premier was asked by US Secretary of State John Kerry and UK Prime Minister Theresa May to condemn the Uri attack and the killing of Indian soldiers. The PM, however, refused to do so.

These sources said that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said how Pakistan could do this while India had no regret over its atrocities and brutalities whereas the world, including the influential western capitals, had turned a blind eye to the killing of more than 100 Kashmiris. Pakistan also said that as a result of Indian state terrorism, thousands of Kashmiris had been wounded, including more than 500 who had lost their eyesight because of pellets fired by the Indian forces.

Pakistan categorically rejected the Indian allegations of Islamabad’s involvement in the Uri attack. Pakistan though offered full cooperation to probe the matter as it believed that the Uri attack was either an Indian false flag operation carried out to malign Pakistan and divert the world attention from Kashmir or it was a retaliatory attack by the oppressed Kashmiris, who are facing the worst form of brutalities from the Indian state terrorism.

Pakistan considers the Kashmiris’ struggle for their right to self-determination as legitimate and thus offers moral and diplomatic support to their cause.

The timing of the Uri attack, just two days before Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s address at the UNGA session, had raised many eyebrows and created the suspicion about the possible involvement of India.

Uri is a town in the Baramulla district in the IHK where India through its military had unleashed barbaric and atrocious acts of violence against Kashmiris seeking Azaadi (freedom) from Indian oppression. Only during the recent months, more than 110 Kashmiris had been martyred, over 500 were blinded and thousands were injured but not a single word of regret and remorse had been offered by the Modi government.

Instead of doing what the US and the UK were expecting from it, the PM in his UNGA speech focused on Indian atrocities in IHK. He said, “This indigenous uprising of the Kashmiris has been met, as usual, with brutal repression by India’s occupation force of over half a million soldiers. Over a hundred Kashmiris have been killed, hundreds, including children and infants, have been blinded by shotgun pellets and over six thousand unarmed civilians have been injured over the past two months.”

The PM had added that these Indian brutalities would not suppress the spirit of the Kashmiris; it would only intensify their anger and fortify their determination to see India end its occupation of Kashmir.

“Pakistan fully supports the demand of the Kashmiri people for self-determination, as promised to them by several Security Council resolutions. Their struggle is a legitimate one for liberation from alien occupation,” the premier said.

On behalf of the Kashmiri people, on behalf of the mothers, wives, sisters, and fathers of the innocent Kashmiri children, women and men who have been killed, blinded and injured, on behalf of the Pakistani nation, the prime minister had also demanded an independent inquiry into the extra-judicial killings, and a UN fact-finding mission to investigate the brutalities perpetrated by the Indian occupying forces, so that those guilty of these atrocities might be punished.

“With such a clear stance on Kashmir, expecting from the Pakistani premier to condemn the Uri attack and killing of Indian soldiers is really unfair and irrational,” a source said.