Statement by Dr. Shireen M. Mazari, Minster of Human Rights, Pakistan
at 40th Regular Session Human Rights Council in Geneva
Kashmir Updates - Pakistan Mission, Geneva - February 26, 2019
We greatly value the work of the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR). The new High Commissioner, Ms Bachelet, brings the experience and profile commensurate with the importance of her mandate.
The OHCHR, through its Kashmir report published last year, has rightly drawn attention of the international community to the plight of the people of Jammu and Kashmir living under brutal Indian occupation for the last seven decades. This Report has documented human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian laws by over 700,000 Indian security forces deployed in IOK through excessive use of force, arbitrary arrests, detentions and disappearances, cases of mass graves, use of pellet guns against women and children and the use of rape as a deliberate weapon. From individual cases of rape by Indian security forces, there has been the mass rape committed by Indian soldiers in the villages of Poshpora and Kunan on 23 February 1991.
Despite the UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on “Women, Peace and Security”, the international community has maintained a questionable silence on the abuse of Kashmiri women in Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK).
Pakistan endorses High Commissioner Bachelet’s call for urgent implementation of the recommendations of the OHCHR report. In this regard, Pakistan welcomes the Report’s proposal to establish a Commission of Inquiry for international investigation into human rights violations. We also welcome the European Parliament’s Human Rights Committee for endorsing the same last week in Brussels.
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