Columnist should use facts, not pro-India bias

This is in response to Jim Hoagland’s May 23 column, “U.S. has done too little, too late in India-Pakistan crisis”: Over the past few months, the pro-India bias in Mr. Hoagland’s articles relating to Pakistan and India has become very evident. He has taken every opportunity to put down President Pervez Musharraf and the Pakistani government. Mr. Hoagland has an obligation to present the facts. He has instead chosen to ignore them and present his biased opinions as facts. He is right that war may break out soon, but he is wrong to blame Pakistan. Just look at the facts and we realize his folly.

The Kashmir issue goes back over 52 years. Kashmir had a Muslim majority and under the terms of partition for India, it should have belonged to Pakistan. India did not want to let go and 52 years later, it is still unresolved. The United Nations resolutions have time and again called for the Kashmiri people’s right of self-determination. India, like the world at large, has ignored the plight of the Kashmiris. The people of Kashmir do not see any hopeful signs that India will let them decide their own future. That is the real reason they have taken up their struggle for freedom. India has over the years committed many atrocities and these have been well documented by the world’s human rights groups. Thousands of Kashmiris have died under Indian occupation.

The Kashmiri people have taken up the struggle against India because the world stopped caring. Blaming everything on Pakistan is India’s way of shirking its responsibility to the Kashmiri people. India is doing the same to Kashmir that the Israelis are doing to Palestine. Both India and Israel are wrong to be occupiers of land that does not belong to them. Just as the people of South Africa were able to overcome the white regime, so shall the Kashmiris. It is bound to happen. History tells us so.

Snohomish

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