UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres appealed today to India & Pakistan to ‘resolve the Kashmir issue through dialogue’ to avoid any “potential escalation.” Every time the UN pulls this stunt, it is as an evasion of the real issue. Kashmir is not primarily a territorial dispute between India & Pakistan. It is the struggle of Kashmiris for self-determination against India’s colonial occupation by nearly one-million troops. It is the struggle of Kashmiris against mass rapes, forcible disappearances, pellet munitions & live ammo, curfews, lockdowns, telecommunication blockades, wholesale arrests of young men, mass graves. There is no possible resolution of this dispute without putting Kashmiris at the very heart of it. No one has made that clearer than Kashmiri activists, poets, writers, commentators, artists, stone pelters, protesters.