New Delhi: India has rejected the “factually incorrect and unwarranted” references on Jammu and Kashmir in a recent statement issued by the grouping Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and denounced Pakistan’s attempts to use the platform against the country.
Pawan Bhade, First Secretary, Permanent Mission of India to the United Nations, said: “We regret that the OIC countries, with whom we share close ties, have failed in preventing Pakistan from misusing OIC platforms to push anti-India propaganda.”
Bhade said Pakistan was peddling its “malicious propaganda against India”, in reply to the OIC statement at the UN Human rights Council, Geneva.
He added: “Pakistan has one of the worst records in ensuring the right to freedom of religion or belief for its minorities… Extrajudicial abductions, enforced disappearances, arbitrary detentions and tortures have been used by Pakistan as tools of state policy to target human rights defenders, political activists, students, and journalists and to crush dissent. People in regions such as Balochistan have suffered political and other repression and persecution for decades.”
He also reminded the council of Pakistan’s “abysmal record on promotion and protection of human rights of its people”. “Its shameful history of committing genocide in what was then East Pakistan and what is now Bangladesh, over 50 years back, is well known and needs no reiteration,” India said.
The Islamic grouping on Tuesday – 57 member states, including Pakistan — alleged “illegal unilateral action to change the status of Kashmir” and accused India of trying to make demographic changes in the region.
Pakistan has used the OIC platform to fire at India ever since New Delhi announced on 5 August 5, 2019, its decision to withdraw the special powers of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcate the state into two Union Territories.
In August, the OIC had called on the international community to take steps to resolve the “dispute” in accordance with relevant UN resolutions.
The statement came exactly on the day Jammu and Kashmir’s special status was revoked three years ago.
Clapping back, External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi had said such statements only exposed the OIC as an organisation devoted to a “communal agenda being pursued through terrorism”.
“The statement issued by the General Secretariat of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Jammu and Kashmir today reeks of bigotry,” Bagchi had added.
He had asserted the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir “is and will remain an integral and inalienable” part of India.
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