Pakistani and Indian delegates Monday engaged in a fresh verbal duel at the United Nations that resulted from last week’s speech by Pakistani Ambassador Munir Akram in which he highlighted that Kashmiris and Palestinians were among the peoples still denied the right to self-determination.
Ambassador Akram had also called India’s occupation of Jammu and Kashmir as the “worst manifestation of modern-day colonialism.” Reacting to Pakistani envoy’s comments, Indian delegate Nitish Birdi argued that the U.N. had established the right of self-determination principle as a vehicle for the decolonization of the remaining 17 Non-Self-Governing Territories and not as a justification for undermining the territorial integrity of any member state.
In this regard, the Indian delegate claimed that the territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh will always remain an integral part of India. he went to accuse Pakistan of involvement in terrorism. Pakistani delegate Naeem Sabir Khan hit back immediately. The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, he said, reaffirmed the right to self-determination of all people, not just some people. “The right is also enshrined in the first article of the United Nations Charter, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,” the Pakistani delegate told the General Assembly’s Fourth Committee, which deals with Special Political and Decolonization issues. He also said that Jammu and Kashmir is defined as a disputed territory on United Nations maps and it is not an integral part of India. “Multiple resolutions of the United Nations Security Council define it as a ‘disputed territory’,” Sabir Khan, a counsellor in the Pakistan Mission to the UN, added.
Spotlighting the Indian State-sponsored terrorism, he said it is a franchise that has gone from regional to global, with Pakistan, along with other countries, facing its menace.
Citing an Amnesty International report titled “Weaponizing counter-terrorism,” he said that India is using financial and money-laundering laws to target human rights defenders and civil society. “Today,” the Pakistani delegate said, “more than 200 million Muslim, Christian and other minorities face blatant discrimination in India. “The terrifying rise in Islamophobia within India is a distressing consequence of the blind pursuit by the BJP-RSS government of the majoritarian ‘Hindutva’ agenda and its explicit support for anti-Islam and anti-Muslim rhetoric.
“Today, no minority is safe in India,” Sabir Khan added.
