Amid unprecedented security drills, the three-day G-20 working group meeting on tourism has attracted global attention for being held in J&K’s summer capital Srinagar, in the backdrop of China, a G-20 member, and non-member Pakistan, expressing their reservations and objections over the venue’s location.
Such an international meeting with Kashmir as a venue is a first in more than three decades and also the first since the Centre ended J&K’s special semi-autonomous status in 2019. Earlier, several foreign envoys were allowed to visit J&K in 2020 and 2021, at least four times, to have a firsthand account of the situation in Kashmir after the dilution of Article 370 and downgrading of J&K from a State to two Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh.
However, the scale of this event is by far the biggest. It saw UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues Fernand de Varennes issue a statement criticizing the move by India to hold such a meeting in J&K. The statement was countered by India, saying it was an attempt to “politicise the issue”. There is still a question mark over the participation of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the main countries running the Muslim bloc, Organisation for Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which advocates a dialogue between India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir issue.
