The Pakistan Foreign Office on Tuesday strongly condemned the United States’ decision to designate Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin as a global terrorist, reported Dawn. “The designation of individuals supporting the Kashmiri right to self-determination as terrorists is completely unjustified,” Foreign Office spokesperson Nafees Zakaria said in a statement, without naming Salahuddin or the US.
Hours prior to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with US President Donald Trump, the US State Department had designated Salahuddin as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist and imposed sanctions on him. The Pakistan Foreign Office, in its statement, also reiterated their commitment to countering terrorism “in all its forms and manifestations” and claimed that the struggle in Kashmir “remains legitimate”.
The statement criticised the “the gross and systematic violations of human rights of the Kashmiri people” and the “brutal policies of repression”, which it claimed India’s government and security forces had intensified in Kashmir. Nafees Zakaria also asserted that Pakistan would continue to extend “political, diplomatic and moral support” to the Kashmiri people, and the “peaceful resolution of the Kashmir dispute in accordance with United Nations Security Council Resolutions.”
The US statement designating Salahuddin as a global terrorist said that in September 2016, Salahuddin had vowed “to block any peaceful resolution to the Kashmir conflict, threatened to train more Kashmiri suicide bombers, and vowed to turn the Kashmir valley into a graveyard for Indian forces”.
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