By Robert Fantina, World BEYOND War, January 10, 2024
Good day.
It is a privilege for me to be part of this distinguished panel today.
I would like to start by looking for a moment at the ‘Purposes and Principles of the UN’, specifically Chapter 1 of the UN Charter. Article 1 (2) establishes that one of the main purposes of the United Nations, and thus the Security Council, is to develop friendly international relations based on respect for the “principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”. ‘Self-determination’ is defined simply as the “fundamental right of people to shape their own lives”.
There is often discussion about the right of self-determination of people. Western governments proclaim their allegiance to this basic, human right, while violating it on a daily bases. It seems that ‘self-determination’ is only a goal if the form of government selected serves the imperial masters.
We’ll look at a few examples.
When Hamas, currently much in the news, was elected to power in the Gaza Strip in 2006, the United States Congress approved a near-total ban on aid to Palestine, aid that was already minimal. Outside observers generally saw this as a relatively free election, not encumbered by vote count fraud as experienced in the U.S. in 2000, in the election that brought President George Bush to power. Noam Chomsky commented on this situation. He said: “You are not allowed to vote the wrong way in a free election. That’s our concept of democracy. Democracy is fine as long as you do what we (the United States) says….”
That same year, U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton, later Democratic Presidential candidate, commented on the election that brought Hamas to power in the Gaza Strip. She said this: “I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake. And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”
So much for U.S. support for self-determination.
That is simply one example among many, too numerous to list today. But we must remember that in Iran in 1953, the U.S. overthrew the democratically-elected government of that nation, and installed and then supported a brutal dictator.
Seventeen years later, the people of Chile elected Salvador Allende. The United States worked feverishly to cause chaos in Chile, eventually succeeding in his overthrow, replacing him with General Augusto Pinochet. It was said at the time: “The experience was particularly tragic because no other Latin American country could equal Chile’s experience with constitutional government and with the institutional elements essential to civil society: an accountable executive, a capable bureaucracy, laudatory experience with civil and political rights, the rule of law, and transparency in political decision making.” Years later, after Pinochet left power, the National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation Report and other studies uncovered the shocking disappearances of thousands of Chileans, and the torture of tens of thousands. That was the price extracted upon the people of Chile by the United States, by daring to seek self-determination.
The examples of Western nations, especially the U.S., preventing the self-determination of people around the world is really endless.
We will look now at the situation in Kashmir in some detail.
United Nations Resolution 47 includes the following in paragraph 7: “The Government of India should undertake that there will be established in Jammu and Kashmir a Plebiscite Administration to hold a plebiscite as soon as possible on the question of the accession of the State to India or Pakistan.”135. A plebiscite can be best defined as the direct vote of all the members of an electorate on an important public question. There can really be no more ‘important public question’ than the future status of Kashmir for the Kashmiri people. All other rights will stem from this one.
This commitment couldn’t be clearer, and the government of India agreed that the people of Kashmir had the right to decide on their own future.
Note the phrase, ‘as soon as possible’. This was written in 1948, seventy-six years ago, and the plebiscite has not been held, or scheduled, or even discussed. The government of India, like that of the U.S. and many other economically powerful countries, simply ignores international law if it considers it inconvenient, and not consistent with it brutal geopolitical goals.
Paragraph 11 reads as follows: “The Government of India should undertake to prevent, and to give full support to the Administrator and his staff in preventing, any threat, coercion or intimidation, bribery or other undue influence on the voters in the plebiscite, and the Government of India should publicly announce and should cause the Government of the State to announce this undertaking as an international obligation binding on all public authorities and officials in Jammu and Kashmir.”1 This, of course, has been ignored.
Further evidence of India’s willingness to ignore basic human rights is an article in the India Quarterly of April-June, 2001. Yes, India’s complete disdain for international law is nothing new. R. S. Saini plainly sets forth Indian policy on self-determination in general, and then specifically in the context of Jammu-Kashmir.
Early in his remarks he states clearly his opinion that “Much of the civil strife throughout the
world is due to the realization of the so-called right to self-determination”.
Note two significant components of this one sentence:
1) Self-determination leads to civil strife, and
2) Self-determination is a ‘so-called’ right, meaning that is it not really a right, but something generally and inappropriately referred to as a right.
Once Saini dismisses the importance of self-determination, he states why, in his opinion, it doesn’t apply to Kashmir anyway. He said: “The Indian stand has been that the state of Jammu and Kashmir after formally acceding to the Indian Union in 1947 has become an integral and inseparable part of the sovereign and independent Indian nation to which the principle of self-determination is not applicable.”
Saini’s view of Jammu and Kashmir being an inseparable part of India is inconsistent with international law, as I’ve already indicated.
In 2011, journalist Swastik Bhushan Singh commented on the right of self-determination of the people of Kashmir. He said this: “Unfortunately, review of the current situation of the Kashmiri peoples’ right to self-determination shows it reduced to political rhetoric or even absent from discussion. However, ignoring the right cannot annul it.
“Further, it should be patently obvious that the crisis in and over Kashmir will not be resolved without renewed acknowledgment and international commitment to the realization of the right to self-determination of the Kashmiri people. Then and only then can a peace plan go forward that has the potential to succeed.”
The repression of the people of Kashmir has become normalized; it rarely makes the news in Western media, and never headlines. The heads of various governments meet with the murderous Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Just last September, Modi met with U.S. President Joe Biden, often referred to today as ‘Genocide Joe’, and following their meeting they issued a joint statement. It reads, in part, as follows: “The leaders called on their governments to continue the work of transforming the India-U.S. Strategic Partnership across all dimensions of our multifaceted global agenda, based on trust and mutual understanding. The leaders re-emphasized that the shared values of freedom, democracy, human rights, inclusion, pluralism, and equal opportunities for all citizens are critical to the success our countries enjoy and that these values strengthen our relationship.”
Sadly, the U.S. and India do share values; these ‘values’ include disdain for human rights; the worship of power and profits over all else; the belief that international law doesn’t apply to them, and that their leaders are above being held accountable for their war crimes and crimes against humanity. These shared ‘values’ also include racism, as demonstrated by Modi in India’s treatment of Muslims in India and Kashmir, and by Biden in the U.S.’s treatment of people of color within U.S. borders, and his support for genocide against Arabs in Palestine. And if there is any doubt that Islamophobia is a form of racism, when Islam is not a ‘race’, allow me to quote from the European Network Against Racism: “Islamophobia is a specific form of racism that refers to acts of violence and discrimination, as well as racist speech, fuelled by historical abuses and negative stereotyping and leading to exclusion and dehumanisation of Muslims, and all those perceived as such. Islamophobia is a form of racism in the sense that it is the result of the social construction of a group as a race and to which specificities and stereotypes are attributed….”
The most powerful governments of the world have no interest in assuring the self-determination of the people of Kashmir. They have demonstrated repeatedly that their political and economic alliances with India take priority over international law and human rights. It is for this reason that we must keep speaking, advocating, voting and otherwise acting to secure the basic human right of self-determination that the Kashmiri people have long been denied.
Thank you.
