India mother-ship of terrorism in South Asia: Pakistan tells UN

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan’s permanent representative to the United Nations Munir Akram said India killed at least 96,000 civilians in occupied Kashmiri since 1989 with 900,000 troops deployed in the mountainous valley since August 5, 2019, branding New Delhi a “mother-ship of terrorism”.

The ambassador also called the world body’s attention to the fact that radical Hindutva ideology associated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is openly calling for the genocide of Muslims in India.

“Since August 5, 2019, 900,000 Indian troops have been stationed in occupied Kashmir in every city, town, village and neighbourhood to impose what Indian leaders have themselves called a Final Solution for Jammu and Kashmir,” said the ambassador while addressing a Security Council meeting on the topic of “Protection of civilians in armed conflict: War in cities — protection of civilians in urban settings”.

The Final Solution, or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, was a Nazi plan for the genocide of Jews during World War II.

“They have resorted to cordon and search operations, fake encounters to extra-judicially kill innocent Kashmiris youth, imposed collective punishment to destroy and burn the Kashmiri neighbourhood, urban centres and villages, used live ammunition against peaceful protesters, including pellet guns which have blinded hundreds of Kashmiri children, arbitrarily detained 13,000 young Kashmiri boys, many of whom have been tortured and who are in the process of changing the demography of the occupied Kashmir from a Muslim majority state to a Hindu majority territory.”

Akram said Pakistan has released a comprehensive and well-researched dossier last year, troubling accounts, corroborated by audio and video evidence of 3,432 cases of war crimes perpetrated by senior officers of the Indian occupation forces since 1989.

The ambassador said Islamabad called upon the Security Council to take cognisance of the compelling evidence of these crimes and to hold accountable those Indian officials and personnel responsible for such crimes and grave breaches of international humanitarian law.

“India is not a victim of terrorism. It is the mothership of terrorism in South Asia. It is Pakistan which has suffered from terrorism in operations that have been conducted since 2014,” he asserted.

“We have cleared our territories of terrorist groups. Our major challenge has been the continued terrorist attacks, financed, sponsored and supported by our neighbour India, including from the territory of Afghanistan.

With the active support of the Indian intelligence agencies, the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Jamaat ul-Ahrar (JuA) terrorist groups have been involved in over 1,000 cross-border terrorist attacks against Pakistan Army and civilian targets in 2020 alone.”

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