UN

India ‘mother of terrorism’ in South Asia, Pakistan tells UN

United Nations (New York): Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN, Maleeha Lodhi, during her address to the General Assembly yesterday said that India is the ‘mother of terrorism’ in South Asia.

Responding as a rebuttal to Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj’s comment that Pakistan is a “pre-eminent export factory for terror”, Lodhi claimed that India’s posture is that of a predator, GeoTV reported.

Lodhi emphasized that “a racist and fascist ideology is firmly embedded” in the Modi government.

“Indian leaders have Muslim blood on their hands,” she said.

Pakistan also called for an inquiry into the “war crimes perpetrated by India in Occupied Kashmir”, the Pakistani UN representative stated, noting that forceful occupation of the troubled, conflict-ridden region is illegal.

“Kashmir is not part of India,” Lodhi stressed, adding that the global community needs to collectively make India stop violating the ceasefire arrangement between the two countries, GeoTV said.

Pakistan’s UN ambassador, Lodhi, said that Pakistan desires to resolve problems through constructive talks, which are conditional to India doing away with its policy of terrorism, the report said.

Ambassador Lodhi said the UN should define terrorism, but said it should include “state terrorism”. “The state terrorism which the Indian National Security Adviser (Ajit Doval) has boasted is being sponsored by India’s spy agencies in Pakistan’s Balochistan province in what he called a ‘double squeeze’ strategy.”

The UN representative said Kulbhushan Jadhav (convicted Indian spy) “confessed to subversion in Pakistan, causing terror in the country, and receiving India’s aid for the plans”.

Pakistani envoy also said, “All I can say about India’s current political luminaries is that they belong to a political organisation that has the blood of thousands of Muslims of Gujarat on its hands.”

She also lambasted India saying that the “largest democracy” is also “the world’s largest hypocrisy”.

“It is ruled by a government in which a racist and fascist ideology is firmly embedded. The leadership of this government emanates from the RSS, the same extremist group, which is accused of assassinating Mahatma Gandhi,” ambassador Lodhi said.

“It is a government which has appointed a fanatic as the chief minister of India’s largest state whose rallying cry to his mobs was: ‘If they kill one Hindu, we will kill 100 Muslim’. It is a government, which has allowed the lynching of Muslims,” the Pakistani envoy said, criticised Yogi Adityanath’s election win in Uttar Pradesh.

 

Lodhi also quoted acclaimed Indian novelist Arundhati Roy’s 2015 statement: “These horrific murders are only a symptom. Life is hell for the living too. Whole populations of Dalits, Adivasis, Muslims, and Christians are being forced to live in terror, unsure of when and from where the assault would come.”

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