Pakistan, India clash at UN over abuses in IIOJK

Pakistani diplomat tells a reign of terror was going on against Indian minorities

UNITED NATIONS:

Pakistan has rejected India’s claim that Jammu and Kashmir was its integral part, saying that the United Nations defines it as “disputed territory” and that it so printed on all the world body’s maps.

“The ‘final disposition’ of the State of Jammu and Kashmir is to be decided by the Kashmiri people through a fair and an impartial plebiscite held under the UN auspices as stipulated in numerous resolutions of the Security Council,” Pakistani delegate Saima Saleem said.

Saleem spoke at the 66th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) on Wednesday, while responding to the claims by an Indian representative that Kashmir was an integral part of India, and that Pakistan should leave the “areas occupied by it”.

Addressing the CSW session, earlier, Pakistan’s Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari said that the illegal occupation of Kashmir by India had affected the rights of women and children there. She warned that women were being targeted by the Indian occupation forces.

“Women are being targeted by Indian Occupation forces, who have used rape as a weapon of war and attacked women and children with pellet guns. We cannot be selective where the standards of human rights apply,” Mazari told the delegates from around the world, many of them ministers, via video-link.

Reacting to the Pakistani minister’s remarks, the Indian representative, besides making claims on Kashmir, also accused Islamabad of failing to protect its minorities and allegedly being involved in terrorism.

Exercising her right to reply to the Indian accusations, Saleem, a counsellor at the Pakistan Mission to the UN, said it was in India where a reign of terror against its minorities was going on.

“The practitioners of the Hindutva ideology, who rule India today, have unrobed the mask of secularism to reveal the true face of Indian fascism,” she said, adding that the so-called “largest democracy” had transformed into a bastion of Hindutva hate, violence, terror, and Islamophobia.

“Since the fascist RSS-BJP government’s unilateral and illegal actions on August 5, 2019, 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’.”

She pointed out that India’s 200 million defenceless Muslims were lynched by cow vigilantes and killed in pogroms led by RSS ‘brown-shirt’ thugs; where members from India’s minorities, including Christians, Sikhs and Dalits, were persecuted at the hands of Hindu fundamentalists.

“Where [India] the criminal perpetrators of the Gujrat and Dehli pogroms enjoy state office and patronage; where the desecration of mosques, including the Babri Mosque and a temple being built in its place, is the state agenda; where churches and gurdwaras are torched; where the Citizenship Amendment Act aims to purge India of its Muslims; where Hijab is banned for Muslim women; where Muslim women and girls are deprived of their right to education; where anti-Muslim social media trolls of “Corona Jihad” rule the internet; and the ruling RSS-BJP leaders call Muslims ‘termites’ and the ‘green virus’; and where calls for genocide of Muslims have become a new normal.”

On behalf of Kashmiri women, the Pakistani delegate added: “We ask the world, we ask this Commission, to demand that India end its state terrorism against Pakistan; against the Kashmiris; and against its own minorities.” She went on to say: “We ask the world to hold India accountable for its crimes, in particular against millions of Kashmiri women.”