New Delhi: India hit out at Pakistan as well as the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for raising the Kashmir issue at the UN Human Rights Commission and said the grouping has “helplessly” allowed itself to be held “hostage” by Islamabad.
At the 48th session of the human rights council, India said Pakistan has been globally recognized as a country openly supporting, training, financing, and arming terrorists including UN proscribed terrorists as a matter of state policy.
India’s response was delivered by Pawan Badhe, first secretary in India’s permanent mission in Geneva.
Exercising India’s rights to respond to comments made by Pakistan and the OIC on Kashmir, Badhe said it does not need lessons from a “failed state” like Pakistan which is the “epicenter of terrorism and worst abuser of human rights”.
He said it has become a habit for Pakistan to misuse the platforms provided by the council to propagate its false and malicious propaganda against India.
The Indian diplomat said Pakistan has failed to protect the rights of its minorities, including Sikhs, Hindus, Christians and Ahmadiyas.
“Thousands of women and girls from minority communities have been subjected to abductions, forced marriages, and conversions in Pakistan and its occupied territories,” Badhe said in his statement.
“Enforced disappearances, Extrajudicial killings, murders, and abductions have been used as a tool for subjugation and to muzzle any form of dissent or criticism. The impunity with which such abuses have been carried out exposes the hollowness of Pakistan’s commitment to human rights,” Badhe added.
He also slammed the OIC for raising the Kashmir issue at the council, asserting that the group has no locus standi to comment on the internal affairs of the country.
“The OIC has helplessly allowed itself to be held hostage by Pakistan, which holds the chairmanship of their Geneva Chapter, to subserve its own agenda. It’s for the members of the OIC to decide if it is in their interest to allow Pakistan to do so,” he said.
