At UN, Pakistan highlights instances of Indian sponsorship of terrorism

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has once again highlighted instances of the Indian sponsorship of terrorism and aggression against all its neighbours, terming New Delhi the “principal perpetrator, financier and abettor” of terrorism in South Asia, ARY News reported.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly, Saima Saleem – counselor at the Pakistan Mission to the United Nations – categorically rejected Indian allegations about Pakistan’s involvement in terrorist acts.

“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 said.

The Indian delegate made that statement in response to Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif speech to the 193-member Assembly in which the premier drew 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.”

“Yet, we fear that these discoveries of Indian crimes are but the tip of the iceberg,” Saima 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.

“Other minorities in India, including Christians, Sikhs and Dalits, also face persecution and churches and gurdwaras are torched by Hindu fundamentalists,” she added.

She concluded by saying, “Like Martin Luther King, the Kashmiris also have a “dream” that they shall see the dawn of freedom one day”.