Daily Times

Member of International Alliance for Defence of Rights and Freedoms, Andy Vermaut has pleaded for screening of all human rights organisations, consulted by the United Nations (UN), which were found involved in spreading disinformation and fake news about Pakistan.

Vermaut, who is also President of PostVersa, Human Rights and Fundamental Rights-chapter, in a statement expressed the shock to know the details shared by the EU DisinfoLab on how the Indian Srivastava Group resurrected ten UN recognised NGOs to spread disinformation and fake news regarding Pakistan.

“I repeat my plea today for a total screening of all human rights organisations that are consulted by the United Nations on human rights and that spread fake news, purely to put a state or a people in a bad daylight,” he said in a video message.

He said it shows how members of the European Parliament, through the fake news channel ‘Indian Chronicles’ were abused and used mostly without their knowledge to present this false information as real. Andy Vermaut said the international community has a responsibility to act, before the UN Human Rights Council is considered to be nothing more than a big joke.

He said the Canners Permanent International Committee, an organisation specialised in promoting canned foods which ceased to exist in 2007, was paying students in cash to criticize Pakistan with fake news at the United Nations, even in 2020.

He pointed that the resurrection of the Commission to Study the Organization of Peace (CSOP) even uses Professor Louis B Sohn, who died in 2006, but the fake media portrayed as if he participated in activities on human rights in Washington DC even a year after his death.

“That organisation was re-established in order to put Pakistan in a bad light. Just like the International Club for Peace Research (ICPR), which was used to put Pakistan in a bad light at the United Nations Human Rights Council,” he said.

He also mentioned the World Environment and Resources Council (WERC) which , he said, was re-established to oppose the construction of a dam in Pakistan.

“These NGOs were mostly represented by students at the UNHRC. These students were paid 186 euro in cash to put Pakistan in a bad light,” he said. He said the operation in which Pakistan was being damaged, through nine NGOs constituted by the United Nations on human rights, should be immediately removed as recognised organisations of the United Nations. He said the alarming thing was that this was being done for the past 15 years “with total impunity.”

“All fake organisations with a hidden propaganda and fake agenda must lose their recognition from the United Nations. It is my plea that the credibility of the United Nations and the European Union itself is at stake here,” Andy Vermaut said.

It is pertinent to mention here that shocking revelations by the EU Disinfo Lab of an Indian clandestine operation to use fake media houses to malign Pakistan and China has attracted a strong reaction from freedom rights supporters, demanding the United Nations to immediately remove all such organisations.