Hours after Pakistan alleged human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir, India issued a scathing response to its neighbours saying Islamabad’s “audacity” as a self-styled torchbearer of human rights is “appalling”.
Exercising India’s Right to Reply in response to Pakistan’s statement in the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC), First Secretary, Permanent Mission of India to UN Geneva, Pawan Badhe said that Islamabad has once again “abused” the platform offered by this Council for peddling its malicious propaganda against India.
My delegation rejects its baseless statements; they don’t even deserve our response, he said.
Training guns at Pakistan, Badhe said, “Considering Pakistan’s own top leadership in the past openly acknowledged creating terrorist groups and training them to fight in Afghanistan and Indian UT of J&K, Pakistan’s audacity, as a self-styled torchbearer for human rights of people of India, is appalling.”
He went on to urge the Council and its mechanisms to call upon Pakistan to take credible steps to end its state-sponsored terrorism and dismantle terrorist infrastructure in the territories under its control.
The Indian diplomat claimed that Pakistan has an abysmal record on promotion and protection of human rights of its people. Pakistan has one of the worst records in ensuring the right to freedom of religion or belief for its minorities, he added.
“Extrajudicial abductions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary de-tensions and tortures have been used by Pakistan as tools of State Policy to target human rights defenders, political activists, students, and journalists and to crush dissent,” said Pawan Badhe in the UNHRC.
Reacting to Organisation of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) allegations on India trying to make demographic changes in Kashmir, he said, “We reject factually incorrect and unwarranted references to India in statement by OIC.”
“We regret that OIC countries, with whom we share close ties,failed in preventing Pak from misusing OIC platforms to push anti-India propaganda,” he added.
