India on Wednesday said that Pakistan has repeated its “litany of lies” at a United Nations forum by accusing New Delhi of committing atrocities in Kashmir.
Addressing the General Assembly’s sixth committee (legal) meeting, Kajal Bhat, the counsellor and legal advisor at India’s Permanent Mission to the UN, said that Pakistan should instead stop “cleansing” its own minorities including Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, and Buddhists.
Bhat’s response came after Pakistan’s UN envoy Munir Akram accused India of killing 96,000 Kashmiris since 1991. He had also alleged that India used “rape as a weapon of war” in the Union Territory.
Akram added that the Hindutva ideology was the “worst manifestation of Islamophobia and bigotry”. The envoy alleged that India financed and fostered terrorism on its soil.
On Wednesday, Bhat said that Jammu and Kashmir will always be a part of India.
“We condemn their [Pakistan’s] Pavlovian response wherever the name of India is mentioned and reject all their allegations and insinuations,” she said.
She said that Pakistan was the biggest “perpetrator and supporter of terrorism masquerading as its victim”.
Bhat stated that India condemns terrorism in all its forms. “There cannot be bad terrorists or good terrorists based on their intentions or objectives,” she said. “Terrorists at one place are [a] threat to the whole world. And therefore, it requires action from all of us, without any exception, to fight terrorism collectively.”
On Monday, the counsellor in India’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, A Amarnath, had said that constructive contribution towards international peace and security cannot be expected from Pakistan as it is the “biggest destabilising force” in the world.
He also said that Pakistan has a track record of illegal export of nuclear material and technology.
On September 25, India’s First Secretary Sneha Dubey had told the United Nations General Assembly that Pakistan plays the “victim of terrorism” but instead fosters terrorists in its backyard.
“This is the country which is an arsonist disguising itself as a fire-fighter,” she added.
Dubey’s remarks came in reply to Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s demand that India should stop “human rights violations and demographic changes” in Kashmir.
India acts against terrorism
Meanwhile, the Counsellor and Legal Advisor at India’s Permanent Mission to the UN, Kajal Bhat, on Wednesday also said that India, as a member of the Financial Action Task Force, is upgrading its Financial Intelligence Network so that terror-financing cases are quickly sent to the law enforcement agencies.
Bhat also urged the UN to move towards the finalisation of the draft Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism – a treaty proposed by India in 1996. It aims to criminalise all forms of international terrorism and deny terrorists, their financiers and supporters access to arms, ammunition, finances and safe havens.
“We believe that when the right action is not taken at the right time, then it is time itself that causes the action to fail,” Bhat said. “We all need CCIT as a law enforcement instrument that should strengthen the existing framework of global anti-terrorism conventions.”
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