NEW DELHI: India delivered a strong response to Pakistan’s remarks on Kashmir during a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) debate, accusing Islamabad of attempting to “distract the world with misdirection and hyperbole” while recalling its 1971 campaign of “systematic genocide” and the mass rape of women during the Bangladesh Liberation War.
Parvathaneni Harish, India’s Permanent Representative to the UN, said the country was “unfortunately fated to listen to the delusional tirade of Pakistan” year after year, as it tried to deflect attention from its own human rights abuses.
“Every year, we are unfortunately fated to listen to the delusional tirade of Pakistan against my country, especially on Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian territory they covet. Our pioneering record on the Women, Peace and Security agenda is unblemished and unscathed,” Harish said while addressing the UNSC Open Debate on Women, Peace and Security.
He added, “A country that bombs its own people and conducts systematic genocide can only attempt to distract the world with misdirection and hyperbole. This is a country that carried out Operation Searchlight in 1971, sanctioning a systematic campaign of genocidal mass rape of 400,000 of its own women citizens. The world sees through Pakistan’s propaganda.”
Operation Searchlight was a brutal crackdown launched by the Pakistani military in 1971 in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), which resulted in the deaths of up to three million people and the rape of tens of thousands of women, primarily targeting Bengali civilians and minorities. India’s intervention that year led to Pakistan’s defeat and the creation of Bangladesh.
Harish’s reference to “bombing its own people” came in the wake of a Pakistani air strike last month in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where over 30 civilians were reportedly killed.
In a similar intervention last month at the 60th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, Kshitij Tyagi, Counsellor at India’s Permanent Mission, had urged Pakistan to focus on “rescuing an economy on life support, a polity muzzled by military dominance, and a human rights record stained by persecution.”
“A delegation that epitomises the antithesis of this approach continues to abuse this forum with baseless and provocative statements against India,” Tyagi said.
He further remarked, “Instead of coveting our territory, they would do well to vacate the Indian territory under their illegal occupation and focus on rescuing an economy on life support, a polity muzzled by military dominance, and a human rights record stained by persecution — perhaps once they find time away from exporting terrorism, harbouring UN-proscribed terrorists, and bombing their own people.”
