Terming Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s address to the United Nations General Assembly on Friday as a hate speech, India said Pakistan had “built an industry of terrorism from the ideology of hate” and called Khan “an open defender of Osama bin Laden.”
“Pakistan is a country which provides shelter to 130 UN-designated terrorists and 25 terror entities. Will Pakistan acknowledges that it is the only government in the world that provides pension to an individual listed in the Al Qaeda and Daesh sanctions list,” asked India’s first secretary at the permanent mission to the UN Vidisha Maitra while using India’s right to reply.
“Imran Khan’s speech was a callous portrayal of the world in binary terms.
It was a script that fosters divisiveness at the United Nations and is an attempt to sharpen differences and stir up hatred,” Maitra said. Saying that words are of paramount importance in diplomacy, Maitra rebutted Khan’s usage of words like pogrom, bloodbath, racial superiority and pick up the gun.
“Invocation of phrases such as pogrom, bloodbath, racial superiority, pick up the gun and fight to the end reflect a medieval mindset and not a 21st-century vision,” she said.
Maitra said India’s citizens did not need anybody to speak on their behalf and Pakistan should refresh its “sketchy understanding of history” and look into its own gross human rights violations before lecturing India.
“Do not forget the gruesome genocide perpetrated by Pakistan against its own people in 1971 and the role played by Lt. Gen AAK Niazi, a sordid fact that the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina reminded this Assembly about,” she said.
Further attacking the Pakistan Prime Minister, Maitra said Khan had misused an august platform in his almost 50-minute long address. “Rarely has the UN General Assembly witnessed such misuse, rather abuse, of an opportunity to reflect.”
India said Khan’s speech bordered on “crudeness of the variety that is reminiscent of the guns of Darra Adam Khel” despite the Pakistan Prime Minister being a former cricketer, who believed in the gentleman’s game.
Terming Pakistan’s repeated objections to the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir as virulent, India said such reactions often arise out of those “who thrive on conflict and never welcome the ray of peace.”
India takes swipe at China
Rebutting reference to Kashmir made by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the UNGA, India said the developments in the state are entirely an internal matter.
“We expect other countries to respect India’s sovereignty and desist from efforts to change the status quo through the illegal so-called China Pakistan Economic Corridor,” MEA spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.