Lodhi apprises UN official of India's false claims of hitting camps in AJK

UNITED NATIONS: A senior Pakistani diplomat told a top United Nation official that India’s “false and malevolent” claims of having destroyed the so-called camps across the Line of Control (LoC) in Azad Kashmir were proved to be lies when Pakistan took Islamabad-based foreign diplomats to the site in question on Monday.

“This is patent falsehood,” Ambassador Maleeha Lodhi said of the Indian claims at a meeting with the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Rosemary DiCarlo, during which the UN official was also updated on the grave situation in Indian occupied Kashmir that poses a threat to regional peace and security, according to official sources.

The Pakistani envoy, according to the sources, said that the Indian High Commission in Islamabad was also formally invited to join the trip, but they did not take up the offer, sensing that their claims would be exposed.

Briefing Ms. DiCarlo, Ambassador Lodhi said that India’s illegal annexation of the state of occupied Kashmir on Aug. 5 had triggered multiple crises in the region and urged the UN to play its part for a peaceful settlement of the decades-old Kashmir dispute.

Ambassador Lodhi cited media reports of widespread torture and arbitrary arrests; of thousands being picked up from their homes in the dead of the night, without any trace, as well as the abduction of over 13,000 Kashmiris, including children.

She told the UN official that the situation on the ground was brewing into a full-fledged humanitarian crisis, the true extent of which will only be known once the “draconian” restrictions were lifted.

Ambassador Lodhi dismissed India’s claims of normalcy having returned to occupied Kashmir, as “yet another Indian fallacy”, saying it has been debunked by the international media and human rights organizations.