Clean hands.

Byline: Abdul Moiz Jaferii

LAST month, the prime minister spoke with great emotion at the UN General Assembly in New York, where he implored the world to respect Muslim sentiment, and for it to be outraged at the treatment of humanity in India-held Kashmir.

That Kashmir can be presented to the world as a human rights issue needs no further qualifiers. A domineering and fascist state apparatus has taken away basic rights from a population to the degree that an entire territory now resembles a concentration camp.

Horror stories are surfacing of people dying of otherwise preventable causes, patients with renal failure suffering without dialysis, patients with cardiac problems unable to call ambulances. Doctors, afraid of speaking on the record for fear of immediate dismissal, speak of hundreds of outpatient cases in every hospital where patients have been unable to turn up for treatment.

The New York Times recently published a harrowing story of a son who walked into his house to tell his mother that he was going to die, because he had just been bitten by a snake. He had made the horrific calculation that he would need anti-venom within six hours to survive, and that the communications blockade and movement restrictions meant this would be impossible. His mother attempted to defy the odds, begged everyone she could to help, travelled unsuccessfully to the local clinic and the nearest hospital, but 22 hours later her son was proved right and died due to a lack of timely medical treatment.

The world chooses to look beyond our championing the rights of humanity in India-held Kashmir.

We use these stories to highlight the morally repugnant situation in occupied Kashmir. We also wonder why the world does not listen to us. We blame it for being biased against the religion of the majority of the Kashmiris; our prime minister argued that a few thousand Jews would not be left to suffer the fate the world ignores of eight million Kashmiris.

Perhaps much of the blame lies with the world for its discounted appreciation of Muslim lives. Perhaps the problem also lies with us. The question that arises when we highlight Kashmir as simply a human problem, is where does the concern for humanity disappear when the crisis is elsewhere?

There is a legal maxim which underpins the administration of equitable relief, that he who comes into equity must do so with clean hands. Briefly, it is the idea that where you are seeking an intervention from an adjudicating body...