- Envoy Asif Khan tells UN body Jammu and Kashmir ‘not, and has never been, an integral part of India’
- Accuses India of pursuing a settler-colonial project in violation of UN resolutions and international law
- Rejects Indian MP’s remarks labelling Pakistan a ‘fountainhead of terror,’ calls India ‘world’s largest producer of disinformation’
- Says Pakistan acted responsibly during May border escalation, vows continued support for Kashmiris’ struggle for justice and freedom.
NEW YORK: Pakistan on Monday strongly criticized India at the United Nations for reneging on its commitments under the UN Security Council resolutions that guarantee the people of Jammu and Kashmir the right to self-determination, saying New Delhi’s ongoing settler-colonial project in the disputed territory blatantly violates international law.
Exercising the right of reply in the UN General Assembly’s Special Political and Decolonization Committee, Pakistan’s delegate Asif Khan asserted that “Jammu and Kashmir is not, and has never been, an integral part of India,” countering the Indian representative N.K. Premachandran’s claim that the region was and would “always remain an integral and inalienable part of India.”
Premachandran, an Indian MP, had also described Pakistan as a “fountainhead of terror” and commented on its internal affairs. In response, Asif Khan, a minister at Pakistan’s UN Mission, rejected the accusation, calling India “the world’s largest producer of disinformation.”
Kashmir, he said, remains an internationally recognized disputed territory whose final status must be decided through a free and impartial plebiscite under UN auspices. He cited the UN Declaration of 1960, which decrees that all peoples under alien subjugation have the right to self-determination — a principle also enshrined in the UN Charter.
“For long, India has tried to sell a false narrative, branding the just struggle of the people of Jammu and Kashmir as terrorism,” the Pakistani delegate said, adding that India’s refusal to grant Kashmiris their basic rights and its record of extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, mass incarcerations, sexual violence, and demographic engineering are the real drivers of the indigenous resistance movement.
While portraying itself as a victim, he said, India was in fact “the principal sponsor of state terrorism in the region,” financing and directing terrorist proxies such as the TTP, BLA and Majeed Brigade, whose attacks had killed thousands of civilians in Pakistan.
Asif Khan described India’s claim of being the world’s largest democracy as “hollow,” saying the RSS-BJP ideology had institutionalized Islamophobia and turned the persecution of minorities into state policy, a trend widely documented by international human rights organizations.
Recalling India’s “unprovoked aggression” against Pakistan in May, he said the attack targeted civilians, including women and children, but was “responded to in a measured manner aimed solely at military targets.” India, he added, “suffered significant losses, including multiple aircraft downed,” and it was Pakistan’s “responsible posture and international facilitation” that prevented escalation.
Mr Khan reaffirmed that Pakistan would continue to expose India’s hypocrisy, oppose its state terrorism, and support the Kashmiri people’s legitimate struggle for justice, dignity, and freedom.
