EU slams PoK rights abuse, rejects Pak's Kashmir claims

The European Parliament today passed the Baroness Emma Nicholson Report on Kashmir with an overwhelming majority.

The report, which has criticised the human rights situation in the Pakistani occupied Kashmir, got a thumping approval from the parliamentarians.

Prior to the debate on the report at the plenary session of the European Parliament, Baroness Nicholson gave a rejoinder to a letter she received from Saeed Khalid, Pakistan's Ambassador to the European Union.

Responding to Khalid's contention that the Northern Areas of Pakistan were never a part of Jammu and Kashmir, and that the Siachen Glacier formed a part of the Northern Areas, Baroness Nicholson said she could not "commend" the Pakistan government's "new position" to the European Parliament.

She said she had revisited her earlier research on the geography and history of the region and added that Pakistan's claim that the Northern Areas were independent of Jammu and Kashmir in August 1947 was incorrect as the British had only leased a small part of the territory from the Maharajah (Hari Singh) on March 29, 1935.

She said as supporting evidence, she was forwarding an official map of the region as it existed in 1909, which clearly showed Gilgit and Baltistan to be well within the borders of Kashmir, an extract of the leasehold agreement of 1935, and an extract of the Instrument of Accession of October 26, 1947.

On the issue of the Siachen Glacier being a part of the Northern Areas, she said she could not incorporate Pakistan's viewpoint on the issue into the final report, as the "Siachen Glacier issue only found small mention in the report, and new section would have to be created to adopt the eleven paragraphs of information provided by Islamabad."