UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan has urged the UN General Assembly and the Security Council to address India’s new strategy of conducting cross-border assassinations.

During a General Assembly debate on the “Culture of Peace” on Thursday evening, Pakistan’s UN Ambassador Munir Akram highlighted that India was also targeting Muslims, Christians, and other minorities within its borders.

He stressed that India’s extraterritorial state terrorism was not confined to Pakistan and it was extending to targeting of political opponents in Canada and the United States and potentially other nations as well.

Ambassador Akram also referenced a recent Washington Post report, which quoted Prime Minister Narendra Modi telling his supporters: “Today, even India’s enemies know: This is Modi, this is the new India. This New India comes into your home and kills you.”

The Pakistani envoy informed the world body that since the BJP-RSS government assumed office in 2014, “hate, oppression, and violence” against India’s Muslims, Christians, Dalits and others had become rampant and systematic, fueled by the ideology of Hindutva.

“Unless Hindutva fascism is opposed, unless the sense of impunity of the BJP-RSS is ended, unless the Indian Muslims are protected against genocide, and unless the Kashmir dispute is peacefully resolved, wider violence and conflict in South Asia is a real and present danger,” he warned.

Ambassador Akram pointed out that despite efforts to promote a culture of peace, the world was witnessing the rise of hate, violence, and war, with over 300 conflicts raging across the globe.

“The right of peoples to self-determination is being brutally suppressed, especially in Palestine and in Jammu and Kashmir,” he said, adding, “We see the spread of discrimination, bigotry, xenophobia and Islamophobia even in mature democracies.”

Highlighting Pakistan’s efforts to combat Islamophobia, he said, “The world cannot but be deeply concerned at the officially sanctioned manifestations of Islamophobia in India”.

He urged the UN Secretary-General to implement the Plan of Action for the protection of religious sites. Pakistan, he said, had circulated to the United Nations a detailed dossier, with concrete evidence, of over 2400 crimes committed by named Indian officials in occupied Jammu and Kashmir.

“The Jammu and Kashmir dispute is an open wound which can once again trigger a disastrous conflict between Pakistan and India. It needs to be resolved urgently in accordance with the resolutions of the Security Council and the wishes of the Kashmiri people,” he said. Ambassador Akram told the Assembly about the BJP-RSS government’s belligerence and aggression against Pakistan, pointing out that the Indian Defence Minister had threatened to “take over” Azad Kashmir. The Indian Army Chief has also threatened to cross the Line of Control, he added. “India’s armed forces have adopted dangerous doctrines: ‘Cold Start’, to launch a surprise attack against Pakistan, another contemplating, and I quote ‘a limited war under the nuclear overhang’.

India, he said, was financing and sponsoring terrorist groups, especially the TTP and the BLA, to conduct attacks in Pakistan across the country’s Western borders in an attempt to disrupt the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Published in Dawn, May 4th, 2024