Pakistani diplomat Friday hit back after an Indian delegate accused Pakistan of being a sponsor and promoter of terrorist acts, asserting that India practices state-sponsored terrorism as policy at home and abroad.
“Its (India’s) hypocrisy is well exposed; It cannot hide anymore its aiding, abetting, and financing of terrorism in Pakistan, its covert terrorist networks across the region, and its reign of terror in occupied Kashmir,” Saima Saleem, a counsellor at the Pakistan Mission to the United Nations, said while exercising her right of reply in the UN General Assembly.
Ms Saleem was reacting to the statement made by India’s delegate, Ms. Petal Gahlot, in response to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s sharp speech earlier in the day in which he made a pointed reference to the brief military conflict with India in May when Pakistan’s valiant armed forces repelled an “unprovoked aggression” with “stunning professionalism”, shooting down seven Indian aircraft.
In her response, the Indian delegate accused Pakistan of “glorifying terrorism” and shielding terrorist outfits like the Resistance Front (TRF), which India claimed carried out the Pahalgam attack, although the group denied any involvement.
Rebutting the Indian allegations about terrorism, Ms Saleem said, “Through its proxies like TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan), BLA (Balochistan Liberation Army) and (its) Majeed Brigade, Indian-sponsored terrorism has not just claimed lives of thousands of innocent civilians in Pakistan, it has turned places of worship, learning, and livelihood into sites of carnage.”
She referred to Pakistan’s sacrifices in the global fight against terrorism, saying, “This forum certainly needs no sermons from an aggressor, occupier, and perpetrator of state-sponsored terrorism.”
Pakistan, she added, not only condemned but also called for credible, impartial, and independent investigations into the Pahalgam incident. “If India had nothing to hide, it should have agreed to such investigations.”
Before, during, and after the conflict, Ms.Saleem said, Pakistan maintained a principled and calibrated approach, avoiding harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure.
“When its adventurism collapsed in defeat, it resorted to excuses, but the truth could not be concealed. The bubble of hubris has been burst, the myth of military might shattered, and the irrefutable evidence of Indian losses has been provided by the international community.”
India’s holding in abeyance of the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty has unmasked it as a blatant violator of international law, the Pakistani diplomat said, adding that by weaponizing water, it has demonstrated that it is a state that threatens regional peace, denies millions right to water and breaches the sanctity of a humanitarian treaty.
Under RSS-BJP dispensation in India, she said Muslims are lynched for their faith, Christians assaulted for their worship, Sikhs for their identity, and Dalits dehumanized for their caste.
“The world has not forgotten Gujarat where thousands of Muslims were butchered under state patronage; Delhi when mobs rampaged while police looked away; Manipur where hundreds were killed and thousands displaced. India’s record is written not only in blood but also in words — hateful rhetoric from its highest leaders, open calls for genocide, and a pliant media feeding bigotry. In incredibly intolerant India, Islamophobia today is institutionalized in law, normalized in politics, and glorified in the media.”
Beyond its borders, she said India bullies neighbours, blocks regional cooperation, exports violence abroad through extrajudicial assassinations, and funds proxies to destabilize the region. “This is the face of ‘New India’: Islamophobia at home, aggression abroad, with Hindutva ideology at its core”.
As regard the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir, Ms Saleem said that it is not, and has never been, an integral part of India, pointing out that with 900,000 occupation troops, Jammu and Kashmir has been turned into one of the world’s most militarized zones.