Pakistan mulling going to ICC over India’s Kashmir move

KARACHI, Pakistan

Pakistan said Tuesday it is considering approaching the International Criminal Court (ICC) because of India’s move to strip the disputed Jammu Kashmir valley of its decades-long special status.

“Pakistan will raise this issue at every forum, including the United Nations Security Council and the General Assembly,” Prime Minister Imran Khan told a joint session of the parliament -- the Senate and National Assembly. “We are assessing the ways to how to take this matter to the ICC.”

The session was summoned by President Arif Alvi to discuss next steps after New Delhi’s move fueled already heightened tensions between the two longtime rivals.

Khan dubbed India’s controversial decision not only a violation of international law and conventions but its own Constitution and laws and asserted the move would further accelerate the freedom of movement in the disputed valley.

“This will have very serious repercussions. The people who have kept their resistance alive despite the state brutality will not stop just because [India] have changed a law,” he said. “[India] will not stop here. It will further suppress the people of Kashmir who will react. I here predict that India will blame Pakistan for their reaction.”

Khan said if New Delhi went for a misadventure in Pakistani-administered Kashmir, Islamabad would response with full force and warned it might lead to a conventional war between the two nuclear rivals.

“This is not nuclear blackmailing. This is a fact that the two nuclear-armed states cannot afford war. Therefore, it is high time for the international community to take notice of this injustice,” he said.

“Not only Pakistan but the entire Muslim world stands besides Kashmiris. If the international community does not act to implement its own rules and regulations then we will not be responsible for the repercussions,” the former cricket star-turned-politician maintained.

Opposition leader Shehbaz Sharif criticized Khan for unduly concentrating on U.S. President Donald Trump’s offer to mediate the Kashmir dispute between Pakistan and India.

“On the one hand, the U.S. wants us to play a role for peace in Afghanistan but on the other, it is doing nothing to stop India from playing with the peace of the whole region”, the three-time chief minister of Punjab told the assembly.

“These [two strategies] cannot go together. We cannot let Kashmir to become another Palestine,” he said.

Since 1947, Jammu and Kashmir enjoyed special provisions to enact its own laws. The provision also protected its citizenship law that disallowed outsiders to settle and own land in the territory.

The Himalayan region is held by India and Pakistan in parts and claimed by both in full.

Since they were partitioned in 1947, the two countries have fought three wars -- in 1948, 1965 and 1971 -- two of them over Kashmir.

Some Kashmiri groups in Jammu and Kashmir have been fighting against Indian rule for independence, or for unification with neighboring Pakistan.

According to several human rights organizations, thousands of people have reportedly been killed in the conflict in the region since 1989.