India has strongly hit out at Pakistan after its caretaker leader raked
up Kashmir issue in his address to the UN General Assembly, with Delhi saying
the “home and patron” to the largest number of proscribed terrorist entities in
the world should take credible action against perpetrators of the 26/11 Mumbai
attacks instead of engaging in “technical sophistry”.
First Secretary in India’s Permanent Mission to the UN Petal Gahlot
exercised India’s Right of Reply in the UNGA after Pakistan’s caretaker Prime
Minister Anwaar ul Haq Kakar raised the Kashmir issue in his address at the
General Debate during the high-level 78th session of UNGA on Friday.
“Pakistan has been the home
and patron to the largest number of internationally proscribed terrorist
entities and individuals in the world. Instead of engaging in technical sophistry,
we call upon Pakistan to take credible and verifiable action against the
perpetrators of the Mumbai terror attacks, whose victims await justice even
after 15 years,” Gahlot said in the scathing response.
She said Pakistan needs to take three-fold action for there to be
peace in South Asia.
“First, stop cross-border terrorism and shut down its
infrastructure of terrorism immediately. Second, vacate Indian territories
under its illegal and forcible occupation, and third, stop the grave and persistent
human rights violations against the minorities in Pakistan.”
In his address earlier, Kakar said Pakistan desired peaceful and
productive relations with all its neighbours, including India. “Kashmir is the
key to peace between Pakistan and India,” he said.
Gahlot reiterated that the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir
and Ladakh are an integral part of India.
“Matters pertaining to the UTs of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are
purely internal to India. Pakistan has no locus standi to comment on our
domestic matters.”
The young Indian diplomat asserted that as a country with one of
the world’s worst human rights records, particularly when it comes to minority
and women’s rights, Pakistan “would do well to put its own house in order
before venturing to point a finger at the world’s largest democracy”.
India stressed that Pakistan has become a “habitual offender” when
it comes to misusing the august forum of the United Nations to peddle “baseless
and malicious” propaganda against India.
Gahlot said the member States of the United Nations and other
multilateral organisations are well aware that Pakistan does so to “deflect the
international community’s attention away from its own abysmal record on human
rights”.
Citing a “glaring example” of the systemic violence against
minorities in Pakistan, Gahlot referred to the large-scale “brutality”
perpetrated against the minority Christian community in Jaranwala in the
country’s Faisalabad district in August 2023, where a total of 19 churches were
gutted and 89 Christian houses burnt down.
“Similar treatment has been meted out to the Ahmadiyyas whose
places of worship” have been demolished.
The condition of women belonging to minority communities in
Pakistan, notably Hindus, Sikhs and Christians, remains deplorable, she said.
According to a recent report published by Pakistan’s own human
rights commission, an estimated 1,000 women from minority communities are
subjected to abduction, forced conversion and marriage in Pakistan every year,
Gahlot added.
A Pakistani diplomat took the floor to exercise Islamabad’s Right
to Reply to India’s response.
India fields its young female and male diplomats posted at its
Permanent Mission in New York to give scathing and hard-hitting responses to
Pakistan’s Presidents, Prime Ministers and Foreign Ministers, who repeatedly
raise the issue of Jammu and Kashmir in their annual addresses to the
high-level General Assembly sessions.
PTI/Yogita Singh
