THE ASIAN INDEPENDENT UK
Bal Ram Sampla
Geopolitics
When protesters flood the streets of Pakistani-administered Kashmir, beaten back by paramilitary forces, their internet cut and their leaders branded terrorists, the world looks away. No emergency UN sessions. No candlelit vigils outside embassies. No hashtags trending in London or Washington. The silence is not coincidental, it is calculated, and it exposes one of the most glaring hypocrisies in contemporary geopolitics.
The contrast with Indian-administered Kashmir could not be starker. Any development across the Line of Control, a security crackdown, a communication blackout, a political detention, triggers swift and loud condemnation. Western capitals issue statements. Human rights organisations publish urgent reports. The Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) convenes. Yet in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK), where protesters have been killed demanding basic rights, where an entire civil society group has just been banned under anti-terrorism laws ahead of a planned strike, and where mobile internet is routinely severed to suppress dissent, the same voices fall conspicuously, shamefully quiet.
The OIC’s silence is perhaps the most brazen. This is a body that positions itself as the guardian of Muslim rights worldwide, quick to thunder condemnations over Kashmir, Gaza, or Myanmar, but constitutionally incapable of criticising a fellow member state. Pakistan sits comfortably within the OIC tent, which means the four-and-a-half million Muslims of POK are effectively unprotected by the very institution that claims to speak for them. The organisation’s silence is not a lapse in attention. It is a deliberate choice driven by bloc solidarity and political convenience, and the people of POK pay the price.
Western governments operate by a different but equally cynical logic. They need Pakistan, for intelligence cooperation, for regional stability, for nuclear non-proliferation talks, and historically as a corridor of influence into Central Asia. Criticising India over Kashmir costs little and carries strategic utility, maintaining leverage over a rising democratic rival. Criticising Pakistan risks destabilising a nuclear-armed state that Western capitals still regard as too dangerous to alienate. Human rights, in this calculus, are a tool of foreign policy rather than a universal principle. Ukraine gets monuments lit in its honour. POK gets silence.
There is also the matter of access. Pakistan does not permit independent journalists or human rights monitors into POK without heavy restriction. No access means no images, no footage, no stories — and without stories, there is no international pressure. India, as an open democracy, is far more scrutinisable, and its imperfections are therefore far more visible and far more reported. Pakistan has effectively “weaponised opacity”, hiding its actions behind a curtain of restricted access and information blackouts.
The people of POK deserve better than to be pawns in a geopolitical game. Their grievances , over economic exploitation, political disenfranchisement, and military repression are legitimate and long-standing. But as long as the OIC measures Muslim suffering by who is doing the oppressing rather than who is suffering, and as long as Western governments treat human rights as a diplomatic instrument rather than a moral commitment, the unrest in POK will continue to be met with the world’s most convenient weapon: silence.
A truly principled international community would apply the same standard everywhere. Until it does, its outrage over Kashmir — selective, situational, and self-serving — is not conscience. It is theatre.
References
1.https://youtu.be/4jpMUTKhLOM?si=IFiAuy8bStpgJtme
2.https://www.studyiq.com/articles/pakistan-occupied-kashmir/
3.https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/world/expert-slams-global-silence-on-pakistans-crackdown-in-pok-calls-out-oic-hypocrisy/
4.https://globalkashmir.net/opinion-the-silenced-valley-unrest-and-human-rights-violations-against-minorities-in-pakistan-occupied-kashmirpok/
