India rebukes China and Pakistan’s statements on Jammu & Kashmir

Randhir Jayaswal, spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs of India

New Delhi – India has once again asserted that Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are integral and inseparable parts of the country. After Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited China, a joint statement issued during the visit stated that Pakistan had briefed China about the situation in Jammu & Kashmir. China thereafter stated that the Jammu & Kashmir issue was a dispute left over from history and should be resolved peacefully in accordance with United Nations resolutions and bilateral agreements.

Responding to this, Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson for India’s Ministry of External Affairs, said that projects such as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor pass through Indian territory that Pakistan has illegally and forcibly occupied. India has opposed all such attempts that seek to strengthen or legitimise Pakistan’s illegal control over those regions. He further said that China and Pakistan do not share any legitimate common border and that India has never recognised the 1963 China-Pakistan boundary agreement.

Under that agreement, Pakistan had ceded the Shaksgam Valley region of Jammu & Kashmir to China, a territory over which Pakistan had illegally occupied control in 1948.

Editorial Perspective

For how many more years will India continue merely rejecting such statements? India should now make efforts not only to liberate Kashmir from Pakistan’s control, but also to break Pakistan into multiple parts.