Pakistan on Monday issued a strong rebuttal to India at the United Nations, setting the record straight over what it described as New Delhi’s “recycled script of distortions” over Jammu and Kashmir.
Addressing the 4th Committee Meeting on the Decolonization Items, Asif Khan of Pakistan’s Permanent Mission to the U.N. said India’s “denials and distortions” cannot erase the simple reality of Jammu and Kashmir remaining a disputed territory.
“I am compelled to take the floor to respond to the disinformation-laden remarks of the representative of India. Each year, India comes to this august forum with a recycled script of distortions. Today is no different,” he said, stressing the U.N. not only has the right but the obligation to discuss the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. He maintained the territory “has never been an integral part of India” and remains “an internationally recognized disputed territory whose final status is to be determined through a free and impartial plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations.”
Khan reminded the forum India itself brought the dispute to the U.N. Security Council but now refuses to honor its solemn commitments under international law and the Charter of the United Nations. Referring to the 1960 Declaration, he noted it decrees that “all peoples” under alien subjugation have the right to self-determination. He noted that India maintained one of the densest military occupations in the world in occupied Jammu and Kashmir, deploying nearly 900,000 troops against an unarmed civilian population.
Accusing India of “branding the just struggle of the people of Jammu and Kashmir as terrorism,” he said Delhi refused to “introspect to find the real reasons behind the mass resistance in the occupied territory.” The real reasons for the indigenous freedom movement, he said, was India’s backtracking on its obligations, and its refusal to grant Kashmiri people their fundamental rights, as well as ongoing extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, mass incarcerations, sexual violence, and demographic engineering. “Since August 2019, India has accelerated its settler-colonial project in flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention,” he said.
In his address, Khan also alleged India has repeatedly sought to “deflect attention from its own notorious conduct, rogue behavior and perpetration of terrorism,” describing Delhi as “the principal sponsor of state terrorism in the region with a dubious distinction of extraterritorial assassinations.” He also accused India of financing and directing “terrorist proxies such as TTP, BLA, and the Majeed Brigade, whose attacks have killed thousands of innocent civilians in Pakistan.”
Khan said India’s claim to be the world’s largest democracy was “hollow,” as it had become “the world’s largest producer of disinformation and intolerance.” The ruling RSS-BJP ideology, he said, had “institutionalized Islamophobia and turned persecution of minorities into state policy.” Numerous international human rights organizations continue to document India’s systematic abuses, he said.
The diplomat warned that India’s “reckless behavior has endangered regional security,” recalling Delhi’s “unprovoked aggression” against Pakistan earlier this year had martyred civilians, including women and children. “Pakistan exercised its inherent right to self-defense under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, responding in a measured manner aimed solely at military targets,” he said, adding India had suffered significant losses, including the downing of multiple aircraft.
“The people of Kashmir have waited for over seven decades to exercise their U.N.-mandated right to self-determination,” Khan said. “Pakistan will continue to expose India’s hypocrisy, oppose its state terrorism, and support the Kashmiri people’s just and legitimate struggle for justice, dignity, and freedom,” he added.