Observer Report Geneva
Decrying India’s massive disinformation campaign against Pakistan, a Pakistani diplomat on Tuesday drew the UN Human Rights Council’s attention to New Delhi’s failure to respond to the widely reported Indian grave rights abuses in occupied Kashmir that evoked international condemnation.
“India has failed and will continue to fail in hiding its brutal repression of the Kashmiri people behind the self-serving smokescreen of terrorism,” Junaid Suleman, the Pakistani diplomat, told the Geneva-based Council in exercise of his right of reply after an Indian representative made oft-repeated allegations about Pakistan’s involvement in terrorism.
“As Pakistan highlights India’s atrocities in Occupied Jammu & Kashmir, which have been well-documented by the Office of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Mandate Holders (rights experts) and international NGOs, the Council has yet to hear any response from India- a country that claims to be world’s largest democracy but has shamelessly violated every human rights principle, norms and laws,” said Suleman, a second secretary in the Pakistan Mission to the UN in Geneva.
The Indian representative, Pawankumar Badhe, had reacted to Pakistan Ambassador Khalil Hashmi’s speech in which the Pakistani envoy had urged the UN right chief to conduct an impartial investigation India’s multiple violations of human rights in the disputed territory.
Ambassador Hashmi had also made similar demands when he spoke on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).
Responding to the India’s terrorism-related allegations, Sleman, the Pakistani diplomat, said that New Delhi’s “compulsive obsession with Pakistan is neither new nor surprising”, pointing out that the Indian government had deployed tools of deflection, deception and disinformation as evident from the EU DisinInfo Lab’s two investigative reports and the “infamous Goswami saga.”
