Pakistan has called on the United Nations Security Council to prevent India from carrying out its “criminal colonial project” to convert Occupied Jammu and Kashmir’s Muslim majority into a minority.

Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi in a letter to the Security Council President for the current month said it is the 15-member body’s “direct responsibility to do this under the UN resolutions.

The Foreign Minister drew the UNSC President attention to highly concerning developments in the Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir, grave human rights violations, illegal demographic changes and escalating threats to peace and security.

He said that since India’s illegal annexation of Kashmir on 5 August 2019, New Delhi has been implementing a well-planned strategy of military occupation, land confiscation, and creation of alien settlements in the disputed territory.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi said the Indian Government has issued more than 2 million ‘domiciles’ to non-Kashmiri settlers, and simplified the procedures to grant a domicile within 15 days.

Indian occupation forces have been permitted to designate certain lands as ‘strategic areas’ and bring them under their use for ‘development’ purposes, enabling them to construct more cantonments and military colonies to settle serving and retired Indian military officials in Kashmir, the letter said.

He pointed out that the Indian military has already seized 53,353 hectares of prime forest, agricultural and commercial land in Kashmir under the guise of “national security”.