UNITED NATIONS: A Pakistani diplomat has categorically rejected India’s allegations about Pakistan’s involvement in terrorist acts, citing instances of the Indian sponsorship of terrorism and aggression against all its neighbours that makes New Delhi the “principle perpetrator, sponsor, financier and abettor” of terrorism in South Asia.
“The myth of terrorism against Pakistan, created and propagated by India, cannot and will not hide the stark reality that people of Pakistan, the Indian Illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) and its own minorities are victims of its state-sponsored terrorism,” Saima Saleem, a counselor at the Pakistan Mission to the United Nations, told the UN General Assembly on Friday night.
Ms. Saleem was exercising her right of reply to Indian delegate Mijito Vinito’s allegations about Pakistan sponsoring cross-border terrorism and accusing it of making ” untenable territorial claims against neighbours”– an obvious reference to Jammu and Kashmir.
The Indian delegate made that statement in response to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s speech to the 193-member Assembly in which the Pakistani leader drew the world community’s attention to New Delhi’s grave human rights violations in occupied Kashmir and called for resolving the UN-recognized dispute in accordance with Security Council resolutions.
In her remarks, the Pakistani delegate said that India has sponsored and perpetrated terrorism and aggression against all its neighbours by creating terrorist groups, and destabilizing and blockading neighbours to do its strategic bidding.
In Pakistan, she said India was funding and supporting terrorist organizations like the TTP (Tehreek-i-Taliban) and the BLA (Balochistan Liberation Army), whose attacks have resulted in the killing of thousands of innocent Pakistanis.
“Since the Hindutva inspired RSS-BJP Government’s unilateral and illegal actions on August 5, 2019, termed as ‘Final Solution’, India’s 900,000 occupation forces in occupied Kashmir – the ‘densest’ occupation in history – have escalated their oppression of 8 million Kashmiri men, women and children in the world’s largest ‘open-air prison’,” the Pakistani delegate said.
She accused India of extra-judicial killings in fake encounters; enforced disappearances of 15,000 young Kashmiri boys; incarceration of the entire Kashmiri leadership; bringing about demographic change by issuing millions of fake domicile certificates to non-Kashmiris; gerrymandering of electoral boundaries for reducing Muslim representation; curbing religious freedom and media and internet blackout.”
Since 1989, Indian occupation forces had committed over one lakh extra-judicial killings, around 162,000 cases of arbitrary arrests and torture, over 25,000 pellet gun injuries, 11,250 cases of rape and gang rape, and 8652 unmarked mass graves, attesting to the genocide which is being committed in occupied Kashmir.
“Yet, we fear that these discoveries of Indian crimes are but the tip of the iceberg,” Ms. Saleem said.
“If India has nothing to hide, it must grant access to Occupied Jammu and Kashmir to human rights mechanisms, accept a UN Commission of Inquiry and agree to implement the Security Council resolutions.”
Highlighting India’s reign of terror against its minorities, the Pakistani delegate said, Islamophobia has penetrated into the very foundations of the Indian state, where 200 million defenceless Muslims are lynched by cow vigilantes and killed in pogroms led by RSS “brown-short” thugs.
Noting that public calls for the desecration of mosques are on the state agenda, she said adding that rich Muslim culture and heritage is being destroyed and history is being re-written.
The Citizenship Amendment Act aims to purge India of its Muslim minority, she said, pointing out that Hijab is banned; anti-Muslim social media trolls of “Corona Jihad” rule the internet; the ruling RSS-BJP leaders call Muslims “termites” and the “green virus”.
Also, houses and shops of Muslims are being bulldozed; and derogatory remarks against Holy Prophet (PBUH) are being made by the top leadership of the RSS-BJP dispensation as a matter of state policy to hurt the feelings and sentiments of not only Indian Muslims but also of Muslims across the world.
“Other minorities in India, including Christians, Sikhs and Dalits, also face persecution and churches and gurdwaras are torched by Hindu fundamentalists,” Ms. Saleem said.
“Let me emphasize that no quantum of the brutality of Indian occupation forces can break the will, perseverance and courage of the Kashmiris to demand their inalienable right to self-determination in accordance with Security Council resolutions.
“Like Martin Luther King, the Kashmiris also have a “dream” that they shall see the dawn of freedom one day,” she added.