The Pakistan delegation to the UN Human Rights Council, strongly rebutted India’s untenable stance on Jammu and Kashmir and slammed its persistent interference in Balochistan. In strongly worded right of replies, the Pakistan delegate termed India’s attempts to deny its illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir a “travesty of history”.

India had introduced a bill in its own parliament seeking to penalize those who depict Jammu and Kashmir as disputed territory. This was yet another pathetic effort to alter facts to conform to their own deluded sense of reality.

The Pakistan delegate drew the attention of the Council to the recent speech by a Kashmiri member of the Indian Parliament, who has described the current Indian repression as “worse than that by Nazi forces”. He stressed that if India had any respect for international law, it would end its occupation and let the Kashmiris freely decide their future through the United Nations’ mandated plebiscite.

The Pakistan delegate observed that they were not surprised by the intemperate remarks of the Indian leadership and the Indian delegation, which constitute open interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs, especially in Balochistan. This was consistent with their record of interfering in neighboring countries.

Also, the sudden Indian focus on Balochistan was consistent with their playbook of seeking to distract attention from the repression unleashed in IOK. The increasing international attention being given to the plight of the Kashmiri people is being desperately countered by New Delhi by attempting to shift attention elsewhere.

The delegate pointed out that Pakistan had scrupulously avoided commenting on India’s internal human rights situation. But, given the persistent, irresponsible flouting of international norms governing inter-state behaviour by India, we are constrained to point out the abysmal human rights record of the Indian government.

He pointed out the egregious violations of human rights of people in large swathes of India. Over one third of Indian territory is under a full blown peasant insurgency. There is a despicable human rights situation in Manipur, Mizuram, Tripura, and Assam, and ethnic groups in India’s north-east have been battling for their rights since many decades in the face of terrible repression.

Pakistan has restrained itself from commenting on the unrelenting repression unleashed by the Indian state in many of its areas. We, instead, only address the situation in Indian Occupied Kashmir, as that is an international dispute acknowledged in repeated UN resolutions. The fact that we do not comment on the abysmal rights situations in other parts of India, is not due to lack of awareness of the shameful record of the Indian State. Rather, it stems from a scrupulous observance of international norms – something which India is incapable of doing.