|

Ambassador Yusuf Buch is resting at home in New york

Articles, Uncategorised

New York, June 13, 2015. Ambassador Yusuf Buch is home now after spending almost a month, first at New York University Hospital, then at New York Rehabilitation Center. A delegation of Kashmiri Americans, including Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai & Sardar Sawar Khan visited him this weekend at his residence in New York City. Buch Sahib was resting comfortably and felt much better today than what we experienced during our visit to him both at the Hospital and the Rehabilitation Center, said Dr. Fai.

 

Buch Sahib told the delegation that he remembers having a conversation with them about the damage being done to the Kashmir cause. He wanted to put his views in writing. Unfortunately, he suffered a reverse in his health. Buch Sahib, however, said, “that an unresolved Kashmir issue, the occupation of Kashmir in defiance of the people’s wishes, has damaged India’s democratic credentials and hence her standing and aspiration for an enhanced status in the United Nations is a point of emphasis in the pleadings of a number of articles written by Indian intellectuals which appeared in the main stream India press. Only shallow thinking will regard this current of Indian opinion as inconsequential.”

“World powers do not have the right, nor the slightest moral authority, to pronounce what should be the solution of the Kashmir dispute in the sense of the final disposition of the territories involved. They have a compelling duty to deliberate upon and recommend how a just solution can be achieved,” Buch Sahib added.

Buch Sahib was born in Srinagar in1922 when Kashmir was still ruled by a feudal prince under the suzerainty of British colonial power. At the end of his scholastic career, passed a competitive examination to win a place in what was called the government’s superior service. Soon he became a political prisoner as he was vocally among the opponents of the feudal ruler’s decision to accede to India and to obtain India’s military intervention against the people’s rebellion. This led to his being exiled to Pakistan through an exchange of political prisoners in 1949.

Buch Sahib came to the United States in 1953 as a winner of an International Essay Contest sponsored by the United Nations. Later ran a Free Kashmir Centre in New York from 1957 to 1972. He was the member of the Cabinet of the Prime Minister of Pakistan from 1972 to 1977. He was also appointed as Pakistan’s Ambassador to Switzerland in 1977.

Because of the long years of close acquaintance with the United Nations became the background to Buch Sahib’s appointment to the cabinet of the Secretary General of the United Nations from 1978 to 1991.

“We honor his illustrious life of courage and pay homage to his life in exile where he dedicated his energies for the freedom of his homeland, Kashmir,” Dr. Fai said.

Similar Posts

  • |

    Kashmir Event Held in Washington, D.C.

    Washington, D.C. February 15, 2104. “Our efforts should be to persuade the world community including the United States to urge both India and Pakistan to include the leadership of the people of Jammu & Kashmir in the negotiations to peacefully resolve the dispute over Kashmir. When we talk of Kashmir, we talk of the sentiments and enormous sacrifices made by the Kashmiri people during the past 67 years for a cause dear to all inhabitants, be they Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists. It is time that both India and Pakistan realize that until the Kashmiri leadership is included in the peace process, these negotiations between India and Pakistan may not lead them to any logical conclusion,” said Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai at a seminar, held at Holiday Inn Hotel and organized by Kashmir Form, Washington, D.C.

  • |

    Self-Determination and the Issue of Kashmir

    The evolution of the right of self-determination has been one of the great normative narratives of the twentieth century. It was part of the visionary contributions of President Woodrow Wilson, who despite a deep-seated conservatism, seemed to have an uncontrollable tendency to give credibility to normative ideas that contained implications that carried far, far beyond his intentions. Ever since the words of self-determination left the lips of President Woodrow Wilson, the wider meaning of the words has excited the moral, political and legal imagination of oppressed peoples around the world. Although, self-determination even now, decades later, still seems to be a Pandora’s Box that no one knows how to close, and despite concerted efforts there is little likelihood that the box will be closed anytime soon. 

  • |

    Human Rights: Are They Universal?

    “Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love.” George Bernard Shaw

    It is tragic that civilized nations have fallen from their lofty calling: namely, human rights for all mankind. There is a sad commentary on the state of human rights all over the globe. It seems to me that until there evolves a generally accepted moral duty among peoples and nations to assist all victims of widespread human rights violations by force or other stiff retaliation, human rights enforcement mechanisms will operate haphazardly and whimsically for reasons unrelated to the harm to the victims or the villainy of the perpetrators. It is the job of all human rights defenders to jump-start that moral evolution.

  • |

    India – US Trade and How It Will Impact Kashmir

    While the hullabaloo over Modi’s rise on the international stage has been on the verge of being a circus, with all the elephants of trade on parade, it is a distraction from the recent collective beating of chests being put on by joint Naval forces of India, the United States and Japan in the South China Sea, called Exercise Malabar, an annual event since 1992 bilaterally between India and the U.S.  Japan joined just last year.  It has been held in previous years in the Indian Ocean and other areas closer to home for India.  But the hegemonic ambitions of this odd couple now reflects the deepening commitment the two countries have made to sharing a strategic military alignment against China for dominance in South and Southeast Asia.