ISLAMABAD: The President of Azad and Jammu Kashmir (AJK), the Pakistani side of Kashmir, said in a statement on Saturday that Indian forces had committed over 1,000 cease-fire violations across the de facto border between India and Pakistan in the current year.
Kashmir has long been a flashpoint between the neighbors but tension was renewed after New Delhi withdrew the autonomy of the Himalayan region last August and split it into federally-administered territories.
Both countries claim the region in full, but rule only parts, and often accuse each other of breaching a 2003 cease-fire pact by shelling and firing across the Line of Control (LoC), an informal border in Kashmir, and of killing dozens every year.
President Sardar Masood Khan said India had “committed over 1,000 cease-fire violations in the current year, which had left eight civilians martyred and 100 others injured.”
He said Indian firing from across the Line of Control was an attempt to divert the world’s attention from rights abuses in Indian-administered Kashmir, urging the United Nations Military Observers Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) to inform the UN Secretary-General and members of the Security Council about the deteriorating security situation in the region. He also called upon the United Nations Security Council to take note of escalating incidents of firing across the Line of Control by Indian troops.
The president said the international community must compel India to abide by the 2003 cease-fire agreement.
Indian Army data shared with the media in April showed 411 cease-fire violations by Pakistan’s military in March, the highest number in a single month since at least 2018. That compares with 267 violations in March last year recorded by the Indian Army, according to the data.
Maj. Gen. Babar Iftikhar, of the public relations wing of the Pakistan Army, said in April: “(The) Pakistan Army never initiates cease-fire violations along LoC, but it has always responded befittingly to Indian Army’s unprovoked firing.”
Iftikhar said Pakistan’s military had recorded 705 cease-fire violations by the Indian Army since the beginning of the year. The Indian Army claims 1,197 Pakistani violations during the same period.
