India gave Pakistan a mouthful at the United Nations on Friday, calling it “Terroristan” with a flourishing industry that produces and exports global terror.
“Terroristan is in fact a territory whose contribution to the globalisation of terror is unparalleled,” India said at the UN General Assembly, asking Pakistan to “abandon a destructive worldview that has caused grief to the entire world”.
The sharp Indian rebuff came right after Pakistan Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi viciously raked up Kashmir in his address to the General Assembly, accusing India of “war crimes” and “brutal suppression” in the sensitive border State and demanding that the UN appoint a special envoy to resolve the issue.
Even by abrasive Pakistani standards, its new Prime Minister’s comments were a few notches above the usual harangue and India decided not to waste any time in exercising its “right of reply” in response to what it called “Pakistan’s defence of terrorism”.
“It is extraordinary that the state which protected Osama Bin laden and sheltered Mullah Omar should have the gumption to play the victim,” Eenam Gambhir, First Secretary at India’s Permanent Mission to the UN, said in a strongly-worded response.
By now, all Pakistan’s neighbours are painfully familiar with these tactics to create a narrative based on distortions, deception and deceit,” she said, adding: “This august Assembly and the world beyond know that efforts at creating alternative facts do not change reality.”
On Kashmir itself, the Indian diplomat said “Pakistan must understand that the State of Jammu and Kashmir is and will always remain an integral part of India”, adding: “However much its scales up cross-border terrorism, it will never succeed in undermining India’s territorial integrity.”
The word “Pak” in Urdu may well mean pure, but Pakistan has become “a geography synonymous with terror”, Gambhir said, remarking: “The quest for a land of pure has actually produced the land of pure terror.”
The Indian diplomat said Pakistan was now busy trying to legitimise terror mastermind Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, leader of the UN blacklisted lashkar-e-Tayyeba, as the leader of a political party.
“This is a country whose counter terrorism policy is to mainstream and upstream terrorists by either providing safe havens to global terror leaders in its military town, or protecting them with political careers,” she said, adding: “None of this can justify Pakistan’s avaricious efforts to covet the territories of its neighbours.”
Reacting to Pakistan’s grouse about the high cost of its “counter-terrorism efforts”, the Indian official commented: “Having diverted billions of dollars in international military and development aid towards creating a dangerous infrastructure of terror on its own territory, Pakistan is now speaking of the high cost of its terror industry. The polluter, in this case, is paying the price.”
Even as terrorists thrive and roam its streets with impunity, Pakistan is trying to lecture India on protection of human rights in India, Gambhir said, adding: “The world does not need lessons on democracy and human rights from a country whose own situation is charitably described as a failed state.”
Earlier, in his UNGA address, the Pakistani PM accused India of having “deployed nearly 700,000 troops in occupied Kashmir to suppress the legitimate struggle of the Kashmiris to exercise their right to self-determination”.
Alleging that India has used “massive and indiscriminate force to suppress the Kashmiris”, Abbasi demanded an “international investigation into India’s crimes in Kashmir”.
“We ask that the United Nations Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights send an inquiry Commission to occupied Kashmir to verify the nature and extent of India’s human rights violations, secure the punishment of those responsible and provide justice and relief to the victims,” Abbasi said.