GENEVA, Feb 25 (APP): Delegates of Pakistan and India Wednesday clashed over the Kashmir dispute after Pakistani Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari highlighted the lingering issue as well as the plight of Indian Muslims at the Geneva-based U.N. Human Rights Council, while urging an independent probe into the rights abuses in the occupied state.
Exercising India’s right of reply, Seema Pujani, a second secretary at the Indian Mission to the United Nations, accused Ms. Mazari of misusing the UN platforms for what she described as “baseless and malicious propaganda against India” and went on to link Pakistan with terrorism.
Speaking in his right of reply, Pakistani delegate Junaid Suleman called the Indian allegations a “desperate attempt to deflect attention from India’s extensively recorded human rights crimes in occupied Jammu & Kashmir and against its own minorities.”
“Obviously,” Suleman, a second secretary at the Pakistani Mission to the UN said, “this canard is neither new nor authentic.”
“This Council and the wider international community can see through Indian lies, diversionary tactics and its compulsive deceit.”
The Pakistani delegate also drew attention towards EU Disinfo Lab’s revelations in its investigative reports about India’s State-sponsored global disinformation campaign against Pakistan, using proxies, 750 fake news outlets and 550 fake websites in 116 countries.
“The UN human rights machinery, world parliaments, independent civil society and global media continue to call out India for its grave violations in occupied Jammu & Kashmir.”
Only last week, the Pakistani delegate said, the UN Special Procedures publicly warned the world community about India’s demographic engineering of the disputed territory and its grave human rights implications. “No amount of guided tours will help India sell its self-serving narrative of ‘normalcy’ in occupied Jammu & Kashmir.”
He said India knows too well about state terrorism as its principal architect, having supported for 33 years the terrorist organization — LTTE — in one of its neighbouring countries, an obvious reference to Sri Lanka.
India continues to direct subversive activities in Pakistan through more than 85 cross-border terrorist bases, Suleman said, adding that evidence has been presented to the world that New Delhi had invested more than $13 million in nourishing UN-designated terrorist organizations TTP and JuA against Pakistan.
“One cannot expect anything less from the modern godfather of Nazism and Fascism-the BJP-RSS nexus, which has unleashed mass violence against Dalits, Christians, Adhavasis, and Muslims in its own country,” the Pakistani delegate said. “This is evident from the marked surge in hate crimes against Indian minorities by at least 60 percent during the last six years of Hindu Raj.”
“From Delhi pogrom to Gujarat pogrom, hands of today’s Indian Prime Minister are drenched in blood of innocent Muslims. Just as the victims of Gujarat, he said the victims of Delhi pogrom still await justice even after one year as its instigator, a BJP leader, Kapil Mishra boasts to ‘redo’ this communal violence if needed.
The Pakistani delegate asked India to allow unhindered access to the UN human rights mechanisms, and independent observers to the occupied territory for establishing facts on the ground.
