PMML president Khalid Masood Sindhu says Kashmir’s right to self-determination must be secured under UN resolutions, while Kashmiri-American activist Ghulam Nabi Fai says that selective international law is failing both Kashmir and Palestine.
LAHORE: On the eve of Kashmir Black Day, Pakistan Markazi Muslim League (PMML) President Khalid Masood Sindhu said on Monday the Kashmir dispute must be resolved in accordance with United Nations resolutions, and urged Pakistan’s leadership to keep the issue alive at international forums.
Kashmiris on both sides of the Line of Control, in Pakistan and around the world will observe Tuesday, October 27, as Black Day, marking the landing of Indian troops in Srinagar in 1947. The date has long been commemorated in Lahore with rallies, seminars and black flags, and Muhammad Rashid Tabassum has writes what the black day represents in a column ahead of this year’s observance.
‘Kashmir and Pakistan are inseparable’
In a statement issued in Lahore, Sindhu reaffirmed his party’s support for what he called the Kashmiri people’s struggle for freedom from Indian rule. Kashmir and Pakistan were inseparable, he said, and Indian actions could not weaken Kashmiris’ resolve.
Nearly eight decades had passed, Sindhu said, yet the dispute remained unresolved. He expressed concern over what he described as Indian attempts to change the region’s demographic composition after New Delhi revoked the special status of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir on August 5, 2019.
India had taken various measures to consolidate its control, he said, but these had not extinguished Kashmiris’ national identity or their demand for self-determination. He urged the international community to play an effective role in securing that right and in drawing attention to human rights concerns in the region.
He also turned to Islamabad, calling on Pakistan’s leadership to fulfil its commitments to the Kashmiri people by raising the dispute at international forums. The party had made a similar appeal before the UN General Assembly session in September, and Sindhu has repeatedly said the dispute remains unresolved under UN resolutions. PMML, he said, would continue to support the Kashmiri struggle and advocate a peaceful settlement.
The Lahore-based party, which contested the 2024 general election without winning a seat, has used Kashmir as a central theme in its rallies, including at a recent youth convention in the city.
Dr Fai in Kuala Lumpur
A similar case was made abroad last month. On September 29, Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai, chairman of the World Forum for Peace and Justice, delivered a special lecture in Kuala Lumpur hosted by the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies (IAIS) Malaysia, with the Malaysian Consultative Council of Islamic Organisations (MAPIM) and the Peace, Dialogue and Xenophobia Studies Centre at the International Islamic University Malaysia.
The audience included academics, advocates, civil society members and officials from several embassies, according to the organisers.
Fai noted that the UN Security Council had been seized of both the Kashmir and Palestine questions since 1948. In April that year, the council adopted Resolutions 43, 46 and 48 on Palestine, while Resolution 47, adopted on April 21, 1948, addressed the India-Pakistan question and called for the restoration of peace and a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir.
“International law cannot be meaningful if it is applied selectively,” he said, arguing that the failure to reach durable settlements in both places showed the danger of leaving long-standing disputes unresolved.
Settlers and domicile rules
Fai drew a comparison between settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territory and changes in Kashmir. A June 2025 UN Secretary-General report recorded more than 737,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.
On Kashmir, he described how the old state-subject framework had restricted land purchases and permanent settlement by outsiders, and how domicile rules introduced after 2019 allow eligibility through specified periods of residence or education. These changes, he argued, deserve careful international scrutiny because of their possible effect on the territory’s demographic character and political future.
He stressed that he was not equating the two conflicts, which have distinct histories. Rather, he said, both show what happens when international legal obligations go unimplemented.
‘Political will’
Fai praised NATO countries and others for invoking the Fourth Geneva Convention to protect civilians in Ukraine, and asked why similar attention was not given wherever civilians faced serious violations of humanitarian law. He also cited testimony to the US Congress by Dr Gregory Stanton, founder of Genocide Watch, who spoke of “the trappings of genocide” in Kashmir at the time of the 2019 congressional hearing, and said such allegations should be examined through credible, independent international verification.
“The international community has mechanisms, institutions and legal instruments designed to prevent human suffering and preserve international peace,” Fai said. “The question is whether the international community will summon the political will to use them consistently and effectively.”
He urged major powers to move beyond “periodic expressions of concern” to sustained diplomacy, dialogue, impartial fact-finding and implementation of international law. “Peace in these regions is not merely a regional aspiration,” he said. “It is an investment in the peace and security of the world.”
Malaysian voices for Kashmir and Palestine
Dr Maszlee Malik, chairman of IAIS and a former Malaysian education minister, said Malaysians had long been concerned with both Palestine and Kashmir, though Kashmir was less widely understood. MAPIM president Mohd Azmi Abdul Hamid said the two conflicts were historically different and could not be reduced to identical situations, but shared one question: “Can there be a genuine peace when the rights and aspirations of an entire people remain unresolved?”
“Let the people live with dignity. Let children grow up without fear. Let families live without displacement,” he said, calling for peaceful resolution of both disputes through international law and dialogue.
Fai, a Kashmiri-American, ran the Kashmiri American Council in Washington for two decades. In 2011 he pleaded guilty in a US court to conspiracy and tax charges linked to undisclosed funding from Pakistan’s intelligence agency, and served a prison term before resuming his advocacy. He maintains that his views were his own.
Pakistan’s position in the UN
Pakistan’s official stance is that Kashmir is an internationally recognised dispute to be settled under UN Security Council resolutions and the wishes of the Kashmiri people. Islamabad rejected the August 2019 changes as illegal and in violation of those resolutions. India says Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of its territory, that the 2019 changes are an internal matter, and that the region has seen development and record tourism since then.
Rights groups and press freedom bodies have raised concerns over detentions and restrictions on the media in the region; Reporters Without Borders ranked India 157th out of 180 in its 2026 press freedom index. Kashmiri diaspora groups held protests at the UN in September demanding a plebiscite and the release of jailed leader Yasin Malik.
For Lahore, where the Kashmir cause is woven into the city’s political life and where Azad Kashmir’s leaders often look to Punjab for development partnerships, Tuesday’s Black Day will once again bring black flags and rallies to the city’s streets. The larger question raised by both Sindhu and Fai, whether the world will act on its own resolutions, remains unanswered after 79 years.
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