China on Friday said it will not attend the G20, or Group of 20, meeting in Srinagar next week as Kashmir is a region disputed with its close strategic ally Pakistan.
“China firmly opposes holding any form of G20 meeting in disputed areas and China will not attend such a meeting,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Webin told reporters in Beijing.
The two-day Srinagar meeting from May 24 is the first major international event to be held in Kashmir after the Narendra Modi government at the Union scrapped the special status grante to the the erstwhile state under Article 370 in August 2019 and divided it into two territories.
India has responded the China’s statement, saying India is free to hold meetings in its own territory.
China did not attend the two-day Youth-20 Summit meeting in Ladakh’s capital of Leh in April, nor did they participate in the March summit held in Itanager in Arunachal Pradesh. Beijing claims its ownership of Arunachal Pradesh as part of Southern Tibet.
United Nations Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues Fernand de Varennes on Monday issued a statement criticising India’s plan to hold G20 meetings in Jammu and Kashmir, terming it a bit to normalise the “brutal and repressive denial of democratic and other rights of Kashmiri Muslims and minorities”
