Cities around Pakistan came to a standstill yesterday as tens of thousands of people poured onto the streets in a government-led demonstration of solidarity with the disputed region of Kashmir, after India revoked its autonomy this month.
Pakistan has reacted to New Delhi’s move by downgrading diplomatic relations, halting bilateral trade and suspending cross-border transport links with India.
The Pakistani national anthem and an anthem for Kashmir played across television and radio, while traffic came to a standstill, and trains stopped, as part of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s campaign to draw global attention to the plight of the divided Himalayan region.
“We are with them in their testing times. The message that goes out of here today is that as long as Kashmiris don’t get freedom, we will stand with them,” he told thousands of demonstrators in the capital, Islamabad.
Yesterday’s protests came as the New York Times published an op-ed by Khan, where the former cricket star warned of rising hostilities between the countries.
“World War II happened because of appeasement at Munich. A similar threat looms over the world again, but this time under the nuclear shadow,” he wrote.
The prime minister lamented that the international community remains silent when Muslims are being oppressed.
“The whole world is watching what is taking place in Kashmir. I want to tell you that if Kashmiris were not Muslims, the entire world would have stood with them.”
The protests come weeks ahead of Khan’s scheduled trip to the UN General Assembly where he has vowed to act as an ambassador for the people of Kashmir.
Following repeated calls to protest yesterday, thousands gathered in Islamabad in front of the prime minister’s secretariat, where Khan vowed to continue fighting for Kashmir until it was “liberated”.
“We will stand with Kashmir until our last breath,” the prime minister said as he launched into a blistering attack on the Indian government, comparing his counterpart Narendra Modi’s administration to Nazi Germany.
Thousands more also rallied in Lahore and Karachi – Pakistan’s biggest cities – where large crowds waved flags and chanted pro-Kashmiri slogans.
“No matter what India does, no matter what Modi does, Kashmir is ours. It belongs to us and we will not sit by as our Kashmiri brothers are oppressed by the Indians,” said Sadaf Mirza, a 24-year-old university student in Lahore.
The demonstrations were the first in what will be weekly rallies held nationwide until Khan leaves for the UN in late September.
Muslim-majority Kashmir has long been a flashpoint between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
Both countries rule parts of Kashmir while claiming it in full.
Two of the three wars they have fought have been over it.
In Indian Kashmir’s main city of Srinagar, suspected militants killed a 62-year-old man, police said, despite a security blanket.
The trader was shot outside his home on Thursday night.
Thousands of paramilitary police are deployed in the streets of Srinagar to quell protests stemming from India’s move to revoke a special status for the territory.
India stripped Kashmir of the special status on August 5, blocking the right to frame its own laws and allowing non-residents to buy property there.
The government said the reform would facilitate Kashmir’s development, to the benefit of all.
However, the move angered many residents of the region, which has been under a security clamp-down ever since with telephone lines, Internet and television networks blocked and restrictions on movement and assembly.
Restrictions were tightened in Srinagar yesterday ahead of prayers.
In parts of the city where deployment was thin most of this week, armed paramilitary patrols returned to the streets in large numbers, manning checkpoints made with concertina wire and metal barricades.
The day of action in Pakistan is Prime Minister Khan’s latest attempt to draw global attention to Kashmir and highlight what Islamabad says is India’s heavy-handed occupation of the region.
Pakistan has sought the support of the United States, former colonial power Britain and others to press India over Kashmir.
“As we take up the issue at diplomatic levels, we also want to show the world and the Kashmiri people that they’re not alone in their struggle,” a former foreign minister, Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, told a television channel.
But despite the effort to put Kashmir on the global agenda, Pakistan is increasingly running out of options, foreign affairs analysts say.
Khan has said the Pakistani military is ready to respond, but analysts say Pakistan will avoid at all costs a war it cannot afford as its economy slows.
India remains dead-set against any outside interference in the issue.
In July, US President Donald Trump told reporters that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had asked him to be a mediator on Kashmir.
India denied it.
Trump later said that the issue needed to be sorted out between the two countries.
The UN Security Council did not issue a statement on the dispute, after China requested one.
India has battled separatist militants in its part of Kashmir since the late 1980s, accusing Pakistan of supporting the insurgents.
Pakistan denies that, saying it only offers political support to the people of Kashmir.
However, there are also questions about Pakistan’s attempts to draw attention to the suffering of Kashmiris, and cast itself in the role of a responsible international actor, given its long record of supporting various militant groups as proxies in its rivalry with India.
“Pakistan has a global image problem, and it struggles to earn trust and support on the global stage – in contrast to India, which despite its heavy-handed policies in Kashmir, enjoys much more trust and favourability internationally,” said Michael Kugelman, from the Woodrow Wilson Center think-tank in Washington. “Let’s be clear: Pakistan’s international campaign will be a mighty heavy lift and a very tall order.”
The crisis over Kashmir also comes as Pakistan is under pressure from the international watchdog the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) to show that it is cracking down on militant groups.
The watchdog placed Pakistan last year on a “grey list” of countries with inadequate controls to prevent terrorism funding.
That move could curb investment or even attract sanctions if it is down-graded further.
Officials in Pakistan say it is working to show it is behaving responsibly and they reject suggestions that there could be a temptation to use militants as proxies against India now.
“We would be insane to do that,” said one senior official.
Prime Minister Khan: We are with (the people of Kashmir) in their testing times. The message that goes out of here today is that as long as Kashmiris don’t get freedom, we will stand with them.
