India Slams Pakistan at UN Meet over Terrorism, Peddling False Narratives on Jammu and Kashmir

India criticised Pakistan at a number of United Nations platforms this week for supporting and abetting terrorism while pushing a false narrative about Jammu and Kashmir.

At a virtual meeting of the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism, India said it was held on a day when the Indian embassy in Kabul was attacked by a Pakistan-backed terror group 12 years ago, according to a report in the Hindustan Times on Friday.

Mahaveer Singhvi, Joint Secretary (Counter-terrorism) in the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), said it was unfortunate that a country which perpetrated terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008, in Pathankot in 2016, in Uri and Pulwama was “now preaching to the world community”.

India accused Pakistan of meddling in its internal affairs during the meeting on ‘The Global Scourge of Terrorism: Assessment of High-risk Threats and Trends Including The Rise of Violent Extremism and Hate Speech in A Pandemic Environment’.

Singhvi said while the world was coming together to fight the pandemic, Pakistan continued to use each opportunity to peddle false narratives and make baseless, malicious and egregious allegations against the nation. He said Pakistan’s statement in the meeting, of claiming credit for eliminating al-Qaeda, was “ludicrous”, adding that the group’s founder Osama Bin Laden was recently glorified as a “martyr” by Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan in Parliament.

Singhvi pointed out that Pakistan’s role as an “epicentre of terrorism” was well-documented by various international organisations, including UN and the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) that has placed the country in its grey list. He said unlike its neighbour, India did not make distinctions between terrorists and condemned terror attacks anywhere in the world, including the one in Karachi, which was referred to by Pakistan in its statement.

Meanwhile, at the 45th Session of the Human Rights Council on Friday, India said Pakistan should not preach to others and remember that terrorism was the worst form of human rights abuse and crime against humanity.

“The world doesn’t need lessons on human rights from a country which has been known as nursery and epicentre of terrorism,” said Senthil Kumar, First Secretary to the Permanent Mission of India in Geneva, during India’s right to reply at the session.

Kumar said enforced disappearances, state violence and forced mass displacements, among other forms of persecution, were regular features in Balochistan.

India had also hit out at Pakistan on Thursday for raising the Kashmir issues at a virtual meeting of multilateral grouping CICA, advising Islamabad to cease its “overt and covert” support to cross-border terrorism.

In a sharp reaction, the MEA said Pakistan has misused another the forum by continuing its “spurious narrative” about India. Pakistan raised the Kashmir issue at the ministerial meeting of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA), an intergovernmental forum of 27 countries. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar represented India at the meeting.

The MEA said Pakistan has no locus standi to comment on internal affairs of India, asserting that the Union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh have been and will remain an integral part of the country.

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