Kaleem Omar
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=story_8-4-2003_pg3_6
If Pakistan has nuclear weapons, India has more nuclear weapons. India was the one that began the nuclear arms race in South Asia, not Pakistan. India was the one that first carried out a nuclear test (in 1974), not Pakistan. India was the one that first carried out a series of nuclear tests in May 1998, not Pakistan
First of all, let me say I agree with my friend Khurshid Kasuri when he says there is no question of Pakistan being next on the list of countries the United States may attack after it is through with Iraq. I think people who are saying such things these days are talking rubbish.
At the head of this class of rubbish-talkers is Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha who has described Pakistan as a “fit case” for an Iraqi-style military action by the US because it has “weapons of mass destruction, shelters terrorists and lacks democracy.”
“It is a fit case,” Sinha told the Hindustan Times in an interview published on Sunday when asked whether Pakistan deserved action similar to that against Iraq.
Warming to his theme, Sinha said he would not oppose such action against Pakistan, but added: “…whether they will is up to them. We can’t go to someone and ask them to attack another country… We keep pointing out the activities of Pakistan and in them the role of the army, the drug business centred in Pakistan… and how people in (Azad Kashmir) are repressed and trampled on.”
So, now, it’s the people in Azad Kashmir who are “repressed and trampled on,” are they? That’s rich, really, really rich, coming from the representative of an Indian government whose armed forces have slaughtered tens of thousands of innocent Muslim civilians in Indian-occupied Kashmir since 1989, and a government, moreover, that has stood by and watched as rampaging Hindu mobs massacred thousands of Muslims in the Indian state of Gujarat last year, egged on by the state’s BJP chief minister.
Sinha is welcome to visit Azad Kashmir anytime to see for himself just how “repressed and trampled on” its people are. He will find that they are not in the least bit repressed or trampled on.
He will see that they live in peace — a peace disturbed only by Indian shelling from across the Line of Control. He will see that they are free to go about their business without fear or hindrance, to travel to wherever they want to go, to sing their songs, play their music, tell their stories, and lead normal lives in every respect.
He will see that there are no checkposts and barbed wire emplacements to block civilian movement in Azad Kashmir, as there are in Indian-occupied Kashmir. He will see that there are no midnight knocks on the door in Azad Kashmir as there are in Indian-occupied Kashmir. He will see that people in Azad Kashmir don’t disappear as they often do in Indian-occupied Kashmir. He will see that people in Azad Kashmir are not languishing in jail without trial as thousands of Muslims are in Indian-occupied Kashmir.
He will hear no accounts in Azad Kashmir of women being raped by soldiers, of houses being ransacked, of whole villages being torched, of young men being tortured and of an entire population being terrorised, as is the case in Indian-occupied Kashmir, where such horror stories are all too common — as documented by international human rights organisations like Amnesty International and the US-based Human Rights Watch, and even by some Indian human rights organisations.
Sinha doesn’t have to take our word for it; he is welcome to come and see for himself. Representatives of the Pakistan government, on the other hand, are not allowed to visit Indian-occupied Kashmir to see what conditions are like in that beleaguered vale. Forget Pakistan government representatives. The Indian authorities don’t even allow representatives of other governments or international organisations to visit Indian-occupied Kashmir — for fear of what they would see there and what they would hear from the local Muslim population about the atrocities of the Indian army and paramilitary forces.
For years, India has been making a big fuss about “cross-border terrorism” from Pakistan in Indian-held Kashmir. Yet it refuses to allow UN observers to be posted on the Indian side of the Line of Control to see whether any such “cross-border” movement is actually taking place. New Delhi is afraid that allowing UN observers to monitor the Indian side of the LoC would expose the hollowness of such claims
But to revert to Sinha’s contention that Pakistan is a “fit case” for an Iraq-style military action by the United States. All one can say about this is that if Pakistan is a “fit” case, India is a much fitter case. If Pakistan has nuclear weapons, India has more nuclear weapons. India was the one that began the nuclear arms race in South Asia, not Pakistan. India was the one that first carried out a nuclear test (in 1974), not Pakistan. India was the one that first carried out a series of nuclear tests in May 1998, not Pakistan.
India occupied and annexed Hyderabad state. It occupied and annexed the State of Jammu & Kashmir. It annexed Sikkim, and keeps casting covetous eyes on the Himalayan mountain Kingdom of Bhutan. It occupied and annexed the princely states of Junagadh and Manawadar. It sent commandos into the tiny island nation of the Maldives. It fomented insurrection by the Tamil population in Sri Lanka and sent 45,000 Indian army troops into Sri Lanka. It virtually besieged Nepal when that country had the temerity to try to open a land trade route to China through Tibet. In 1963 it initiated what Neville Maxwell has called “India’s China War”. And in April 1998, its defence minister, George Fernandez, infuriated Beijing when he described China as India’s “Enemy No. 1.”
As if all this were not bad enough, India has erected a 600-km fence along its border with Bangladesh, the country it claims to have liberated from Pakistan’s clutches. It is one of history’s ironies that the most hated people in Bangladesh today are not the Pakistanis but the Indians.
India’s minorities, too, have continued to suffer at the hands of its military forces and Hindu communal mobs. New Delhi has crushed the Nagas, massacred thousands of Sikhs, slaughtered tens of thousands of Muslims, and is currently grappling with no fewer than 37 insurgency movements of one kind or another. No wonder India and Israel get along so well — they’re both countries that practice state terrorism.
