India requested that the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) not be hijacked by Pakistan in order to interfere in India's internal affairs. The development came just hours after the OIC said that it would support the India-Pakistan dialogue and send a mission to Kashmir.
Earlier this week, India's ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Ausaf Sayeed, met with the Secretary-General, Yousef Al-Othaimeen, as part of the government's J&K outreach. The secretary-general is claimed to have inquired about the likelihood of a meeting between Pakistan and India during the "courtesy" encounter, adding that the General Secretariat in Jeddah stood ready to assist "if the two parties so requested." Moreover, during the meeting, Al-Othaimeen also proposed sending a mission to Kashmir "in accordance with relevant OIC Council of Foreign Ministers resolutions."
OIC's double standard
The development has unmasked the double standards of the OIC which claimed to be "the collective voice of the Muslim world". The organization has never held a meeting with its own member Pakistan on the issues pertaining to gross human rights violations in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (PoK). Moreover, the OIC has not offered to send its delegation to Pakistan where its Army has been harassing and killing its own Muslim population in the garb of suppressing rebellion against the state.
India has been calling out OIC's vested interest. India had previously rejected the OIC's resolutions and criticism of New Delhi's Jammu and Kashmir policy. The foreign ministry claimed that a certain country was using the Muslim-majority nation's organization for a campaign against India, without mentioning Pakistan.
Silent on Uyghur Muslims in China
Further, the OIC is yet to make any statement on the Chinese oppression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. The United Nations discovered in late summer 2018 that at least a million Uyghurs had been incarcerated in China's Xinjiang province's "counter-extremism centers," bringing the plight of a once-obscure primarily Muslim ethnic group into the spotlight. Beginning in the middle of 2017, another two million Uyghurs were "forced into so-called re-education camps for political and cultural indoctrination," according to the report. According to other sources, the figure is one million. Even after so much information about the genocide of the Uyghurs Muslims, OIC has not criticized China.
