Pakistan minister says she warned Rights Council on dangers in Kashmir

GENEVA, Feb. 27 -- A Pakistan minister who spoke at the UN Human Rights Council about the contested Kashmir region said Wednesday she had warned the council that grave perils would arise from tensions in the area if international disputes continue to fester.

Shireen Mazari, Pakistan's Minister for Human Rights, spoke to journalists over the India-Pakistan tension after India claimed to have carried out air strikes in the Pakistani side of the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir region on Tuesday, and Pakistan said it shot down two Indian fighter jets inside Pakistani airspace earlier on Wednesday.

India confirmed that Pakistan downed one of its fighter jets MiG-21 and the pilot had gone missing, which Pakistan claimed that he was in its custody.

Mazari reiterated an invitation by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan earlier Wednesday to India for dialogue to counter terrorism and reduce tensions between the two neighbors.

"The threat of war within a nuclear environment becomes very dangerous, so we hope that political sense will prevail in the Modi government [in India]," said Mazari.

She recapped that she told the Human Rights Council on Tuesday that the actions in the LoC are "a stark reminder that when internationally recognized disputes are left to fester, and grave violations of human rights fall on deaf ears, peace and security issues face serious perils."

Mazari said the Office of the High Commission for Human Rights through its Kashmir report published last year, had "rightly drawn the attention of the international community to the plight of the people of Jammu and Kashmir living under brutal Indian occupation for the last seven decades".

The report, according to her, had documented human rights abuses and violations of international humanitarian laws by over 700,000 Indian security forces deployed in the area.