Islamabad May 7 (TNS): Speakers have called for giving political and constitutional rights to the people of Gilgit-Baltistan by delinking the region from the Kashmir issue.
Speaking at a seminar entitled “Constitutional Status of Gilgit-Baltistan”, organized by Gilgit-Baltistan Awareness Forum on Sunday at Rawalpindi Arts Council, they expressed their astonishment that the GB was a unique case where people plead for Pakistan to accept them as its bonafide citizens with equal rights, each time end up getting too little under one package or the other.
They said that current status of the region is a major bottleneck that has caused 70 years delay in granting basic rights to the subjects and termed packages and orders a piecemeal approach to an issue where bold and clear-cut decisions were required.
The speakers included former GB information minister Inayatullah Shumali, Awami Action Committee Chairman Maulana Sultan Raees, religious scholar Agha Ali Rizvi, senior anchorpersons Saleem Safi and Adil Abbasi, former Sindh IG Afzal Ali Shigri and others while a large number of students, intellectuals, poets, journalists, politicians and religious persons also attended the seminar.
Shumali said that “we are not against the Kashmir issue, but, we cannot tolerate the resistant and bottlenecks from the Kashmiri leadership in getting our fundamental right”. “Let’s not be fooled in the name of different packages. We have the right to approve or disapprove any set up offered by Islamabad to GB,” he said, adding that “we have to keep eye on international powers, because, the importance of GB has heightened in the wake of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
Shigri said that our ancestors got liberation from Dogras but the Kashmiri leaders sold Gilgit-Baltistan to Pakistan through an agreement (Karachi agreement) in which nobody from Gilgit-Baltistan was taken on board before signing the agreement. He said that the people of Gilgit-Baltistan were the real lover of Pakistan and have offered huge sacrifice for Pakistan in different wars against India and Lalik Jan (Nishan-e- Haider) was one of them.
“The reasons behind not giving rights to Gilgit-Baltistan is the fear against antagonising India,” he said adding,” we ourselves decided to accede to Pakistan and we love Pakistan, but successive governments did not accept our region as part of Pakistan”.
Anchorperson Safi said that he could not understand the logic that every movement are launched for separation and freedom, but, surprisingly, the people of Gilgit-Baltistan are fighting for their rights peacefully seeking accession to Pakistan but despite that, they were being spurned. He said that Gilgit-Baltistan and tribal areas were real supporters of Pakistan who themselves offer their region’s to accession Pakistan but the government has imposed FCR and other draconian regimes in the regions by depriving them of their fundamental rights.
“Gilgit-Baltistan is a gateway to the CPEC but there is not a single project for Gilgit-Baltistan in it and no representation of GB in GCC and other working groups of the CPEC.
The GB people are the sole heirs of the destiny of region but all decisions about the region and the subjects are made in Islamabad,” he said maintaining that the region could not be subjected to subjugation and deprivation if the youth of the area exhibited unity and waged a coordinated struggle.
Maulana Sultan said that the government was forcefully occupying local lands and “we cannot let the government occupy our land in the name of the state-owned land”. He said that “if we could protect our borders, then obviously, we can protect the CPEC and now the time has reached that we snatch our rights from the Pakistani government. “We will have show unity among our rank and file if we are dreaming for that purpose and objective,” he said.
