Daily Times

History will remember Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi only as a mass murderer, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari said on Thursday.

Addressing a rally in the Gilgit-Baltistan city, Bilawal said Modi – who was involved in the mass murder of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002 – was now killing the Kashmiris.

The PPP chairman was referring to the large-scale, anti-Muslim massacre 17 years ago when now-PM was the chief minister of Gujarat state and at least 1,000 people, most of them Muslim, were burned and hacked to death. Last week, Prime Minister Imran Khan had warned of severe repercussions of India perpetrating ethnic cleansing in Kashmir.

Bilawal said that after India’s strong-arm tactics in IHK, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government’s foreign policy had led the country to “isolation on the international stage”.

“It took them [the government] a year to destroy our foreign policy,” said Bilawal. Adding that the premier had backtracked on all the promises he had made before coming into power.

“It is very easy to criticise others, but difficult to come through on the promises made to the people of Pakistan,” he said. “He used to say that he’d rather take his own life than beg other countries for money,” he hit out at the premier. According to Bilawal, ever since the prime minister had been at the helm of affairs, “Pakistan has taken record loan in a single year”. “The PTI vowed to give jobs to 10 million people,” he said, adding that the public had fallen prey to the party’s “economic terrorism”.

The PPP chairman said that PM Imran has forced people into destitution instead of giving them a roof over their head. “Even the dollar exchange rate has sky-rocketed,” he cried out. Despite the cost of the Peshawar Metro Project having ballooned from Rs 30 billion to Rs 100 billion, no one had held the PTI government accountable, he added.

In light of the recent accountability proceedings against his father Asif Ali Zardari, Bilawal claimed that PM Imran wanted to lock up the entire opposition leadership. “This is clearly nothing more than political victimisation under the garb of accountability.”

Bilawal has been critical of Pakistan’s foreign policy ever since India’s move in IHK, as on the floor of parliament he had questioned why the government was caught off-guard by New Delhi’s decision to strip IHK of its special status and its attempts to silence the voice of its people.

He also made it clear that the PPP won’t accept bargaining over the Kashmir issue. He also said that the ‘selective’ prime minister didn’t have the capability to become a voice of the Kashmiris.