New Delhi, 19 September(Wishav Warta): India has lately been going hammer and tongs at Pakistan, at international forums and at bilateral meetings, with the newest salvo fired yesterday at the 36th UN Human Rights Congress (UNHRC) when it called its neighbour “the face of international terrorism” and accused it of pursuing “perverse political objectives”.
To be sure, some of these occasions that India has criticised Pakistan have been after the latter, as it its wont, has brought up the issue of Kashmir at international forums, like it did at the UNHRC yesterday and like it did last Friday at the UN in New York. Pakistan often looks for ways to bring up the bilateral issue of Kashmir on global forums, even though it has been told many times, by both the UN and the US – but not by the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) – that issues to do with the troubled state are the business of India and Pakistan alone. That doesn’t appear to matter to Pakistan. In Geneva, at the UNHRC session that ended yesterday, Pakistan said: “…human needs, desires and the right to self-determination” are “being abused” in Kashmir”. It then talked of “10,000 persons … detained and tortured” in the state, according to a UNHRC statement on its proceedings. India then exercised its ‘right of reply’, to savage Pakistan and to talk of how it is once again misusing an international platform.
India also said that Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir “is run by a ‘deep state’ and has become an epicentre of terrorism” where as Kashmiris in J&K have time and again reaffirmed their destiny through India’s democratic processes. “Pakistan has been misusing this august platform to pursue its perverse political objectives…Pakistan’s unsolicited and unwarranted comments pertaining to the Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir are factually incorrect and absolutely misleading. We outrightly (sic) reject them,” said Vishnu Reddy, Indian Foreign Service officer and India’s representative at the UNHRC.
