India is on a dangerous road, playing with fire in IOK: President

Islamabad, August 23, 2019: President Arif Alvi Friday said that India was playing with fire in the Indian Occupied Kashmir by changing the status of the territory and suppressing the people’s will.

“If India feels that this is going to improve the situation with these laws, they are living in fool’s paradise… It is playing with fire and it would burn at least the secularity of India,” the president remarked in an interview with Vice News, a Canadian-American media outlet.

He said the international community should continue putting pressure on India to foil its hegemonic intent to swallow the whole Kashmir.

The president said Pakistan had internationalized the Kashmir issue after a long time and it would continue doing that.

He said since the signing of the Simla Agreement, no discussion ever took place between Pakistan and India on the bilateral issues. In his numerous speeches, Indian premier Jawahar Lal Nehru had said that Kashmir issue should be decided according to the will of people, but the Indian government wanted to control the huge population.

He said the Simla Agreement had defined the issues to be settled bilaterally between Pakistan and India and those requiring the intervention of multilateral agencies.

To a question, he said India was not only refusing to talk to Pakistan but also not acknowledging Kashmir as an issue. The presence of the UN military observer in Kashmir itself made Kashmir an international issue.

The president also urged media to highlight all human rights violations being committed by India in IOK.

He said the Kashmiri people would show their intention as soon as the curfew was lifted.

He said that India could carry out some false flag operation and attack Pakistan as it had done in case of Pulwama incident.

Responding to a question, he said India should withdraw the constitutional amendments and allow Kashmiris to decide their own future.