India Rejects Chinese FM’s Reference to Kashmir at OIC Moot

“Other countries including China have no locus standi [right] to comment. They should note that India refrains from the public judgement of their internal issues.”

SRINAGAR — India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Wednesday rejected China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s Kashmir reference at a conference of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) in Pakistan on Tuesday. 

Attending the conference, Wang said that “China shares the same hope” as the OIC on Kashmir.

India has been fighting an armed rebellion in Kashmir for decades and the OIC has long advocated Kashmiris’ “inalienable right to self-determination”.

“We reject the uncalled reference to India by the Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi,” the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement late on Wednesday.

“Matters related to the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir are entirely the internal affairs of India. Other countries including China have no locus standi [right] to comment. They should note that India refrains from the public judgement of their internal issues.”

India has controlled nearly half of Kashmir since a war that followed independence from Britain in 1947, including the heavily populated and prized Kashmir Valley. Pakistan controls about a third. China holds the remainder and has long backed Pakistan in its rivalry with India.

Meanwhile, an Indian government source told Reuters news agency that Wang would meet India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and national security adviser Ajit Doval on Friday and that while the agenda was unclear, talks on the Ukraine conflict were expected.

China and India fought a brief but bloody border war in 1962. Relations became fraught again in June 2020, when 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed during a high-altitude clash in a disputed section of the western Himalayas.