ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Imran Khan said on Monday the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and other international rights organizations should be allowed to visit Indian-administered Kashmir while talking to the special OIC envoy for the region.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of the British colonial rule in 1947, with both countries claiming the territory in full. The portion of the internationally recognized disputed region ruled by India has long been plagued by violence, leaving tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians, dead.

Ambassador Yousef Aldobeay, the special OIC envoy on Jammu and Kashmir, Ambassador Tarig Bakhit, the organization’s assistant secretary general for humanitarian affairs, and other senior officials arrived in Pakistan on Sunday and will conclude their visit on November 12.

The OIC delegation held a meeting with the prime minister on Monday wherein he highlighted the importance of the organization’s principled position on the Kashmir dispute.

“The Prime Minister underscored the urgent need to allow access to the OIC, UN, other human rights organizations and international media to visit IIOJK [Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir] and conduct independent investigations into and reporting upon human rights abuses,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office read.

He also maintained the “illegal and unilateral actions of India since 5 August 2019” were aimed at disenfranchising the people of Kashmir and altering the demographic structure of the region to convert it into a “Hindu-dominated territory.”

On August 5, 2019, the Indian government stripped the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir of its special constitutional status and split it into two federally administered territories.

The OIC delegation also expressed the organization’s “abiding solidarity and support to the legitimate Kashmiri struggle for their inalienable right to self-determination as enshrined in the relevant UN Security Council resolutions” during a meeting with Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Sohail Mahmood, said the country’s foreign ministry in a statement.