India pushing terrorist outfits in cross-border attacks, Pakistan tells UN
Pakistan called out India at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for pushing banned outfits, such as the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Jamaat-ul-Ahrar (JuA), in cross-border terrorist attacks against the country's military and civilian targets.
"Over the last decade, thousands of Pakistanis have been killed or injured as a result of Indian sponsored terrorist acts," said First Secretary at the Pakistan Mission to the UN Jehanzeb Khan. He was exercising the right of reply at the Sixth Committee General Debate.
The Pakistani diplomat's statement came after India asserted that the United Nations Security Council should not be misused by countries with "retaliatory intent to name innocent civilians as terrorists".
According to Times of India, the Indian statement was an apparent reference to the blocking of Pakistan's bid to have two Indians listed under the UNSC 1267 sanctions committee.
Without naming Pakistan, First Secretary and Legal Adviser in India's Permanent Mission to the UN Yedla Umasanka said: “India has been and continues to be a victim of terrorism sponsored across our borders. We have had firsthand experience of the cruel link between transnational organised crime and terrorism."
In his response, Khan highlighted that India has used terrorism "as an instrument of its coercive policies against every one of its neighbors, especially Pakistan, and against its own Muslim population particularly in Indian illegally occupied Jammu and Kashmir".
"India is financing and organising secret mercenary terrorist organisations based outside our borders to conduct attacks in Pakistan to impede the implementation of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)," he said, mentioning the attacks carried out at the Chinese consulate and the Pakistan Stock Exchange.
"The captured Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav had earlier confessed to organising such terrorist activities inside [Pakistan]."
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The diplomat also touched upon Indian atrocities and gross human rights violations in occupied Kashmir.
"India's state sponsored terrorism has done little to weaken the indigenous and legitimate struggle of Kashmiris for their inalienable right to self-determination. The Indian hoax of targeting so-called terrorists was exposed only recently when the victim's of Indian state terrorism turned out to be innocent labourers."
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"Indian attempts to conceal the reality of its brutal occupation in the disputed Jammu and Kashmir territory have miserably failed."
He stated that India's Hindu supremacist organisations have for decades preached the violent suppression of India's minorities. "Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi [...] was responsible for the pogrom in Gujrat in 2002 which killed 2,000 innocent Muslim children, women and men.
"As the world has witnessed, these anti-Muslim pogroms were repeated in Delhi earlier this year," he said in a reference to violent communal riots in the Indian capital.
"Pakistan proudly reaffirms is steadfast support for the legitimate struggle of the people of Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan will also continue to expose Indian terrorist activities in front of the international community."