The people of Jammu and Kashmir have been struggling to get freedom from the illegal occupation of their soil by India for the past sixty-four years. They have rendered supreme sacrifices and are determined to offer more to take their just and indigenous struggle to its logical conclusion. The Indian occupational troops are continuously resorting to all kinds of repressive measures to suppress the Kashmiris' legitimate struggle for right to self-determination.
It is unfortunate that the international community has not played its due role in bringing about a durable and amicable settlement to the Kashmir dispute, which is the bone of contention between the two nuclear arch-rivals of the region, Pakistan and India, and the main threat not only to the regional peace but the entire world, at large. This apathy of the world community has resulted in the continued sufferings of the Kashmiri people and complete sense of impunity to India for the gross human rights violations being perpetrated by its police personnel and troops in occupied Kashmir.
It is an undeniable truth that the world powers including the USA, UK, France and Germany have been protecting the rights of the people in several places even at the cost of the integrity and sovereignty of the respective states. The East Timor, Kosovo and South Sudan are glaring examples of this reality. But unfortunately, the response of these powers hasn't been up to the mark with regard to two big problems of the world - the disputes of Kashmir and Palestine. The people of these two places have long been carrying on liberation movements against the foreign occupations and the world human rights bodies, so far, have not been able to go beyond the issuance of statements. The international community has failed to take practical steps to mitigate the sufferings of the two nations.
In this backdrop, Kashmiris living on the both sides of the Line of Control and the world over are justified in observing the 27th October as the Black Day, as it was on this day in 1947 when Indian troops landed in Srinagar and occupied Jammu and Kashmir against the wishes and aspirations of people of the then princely state and in total disregard to the Partition Plan of British India. The Partition Plan had given the princely states the choice to join, considering their geographical situation and communal demography, either Pakistan or India, which came into being at the end of British Rule in the Subcontinent.
Since then, the Kashmiri people have been resisting the forcible Indian occupation and carrying on their struggle with little, rather zero to be precise, support of the world community. The objective of observance of the Black Day is to remind the world that it has an obligation to resolve the Kashmir problem. It is also intended to give a loud and clear message to India that they reject its yoke on Jammu and Kashmir.
The most deploring aspect of the situation is that the World Body like United Nations has failed to implement its Security Council's resolutions passed six decades ago that promised to provide an opportunity to the people of Kashmir to decide their fate by themselves through a UN supervised plebiscite. As UN has played an important role in resolving many issues that arose at the global arena during the past sixty-years, its failure in addressing the Kashmir dispute permanently raises many question marks on the credibility and impartiality of this august body.
So, for restoring its integrity, it is imperative for the United Nations to revisit its policy and take substantive steps to impress upon India to settle the lingering Kashmir dispute, once and for all.
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