On 10 April Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mahmud Qureshi wrote, once again, to the president of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). This was his eighth letter after the 5 August 2019 constitutional changes in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K).
Continuing his diatribe against India and the BJP, on this occasion, Qureshi specifically drew UNSC’s attention to domicile rules promulgated by the government of India on 31 March and amended on 3 April. The new provisions are not, at least till now, of general applicability. They apply only to J&K government jobs. However, Qureshi omitted to dwell on this fact.
Misleading the UNSC he implied that new domicile rules cut across the board. He claimed that the objective of these rules was to change J&K’s demography. He asserted that they violated Kashmir related UN resolutions, Geneva conventions on international humanitarian law, the international covenant on civil and political rights. And, in a flourish, he stated, that they compromised the economic, social and cultural rights of the Kashmiri people.