New Delhi/Geneva, (Samajweekly) India on Wednesday said that Pakistan’s perennial India bashing at the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) amounted to mockery, while its own record of human rights for ethnic minorities, social activists and journalists was abysmally poor.
“No fabricated words against India is going to change the fact that Pakistan and territories under its control are deathtraps for journalists, human rights defenders, social activists and religious and ethnic minorities,” representative of the Permanent Mission of India at Geneva, Pawan Badhe, said at the 45th session of the UN Human Rights Council.
India was responding to the statement made by Pakistan, under its right to reply at the interactive dialogue with the Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights on the report of the Secretary General on cooperation with the United Nations, representatives and mechanisms in the field of human rights.
“The perennial India bashing project of Pakistan in the UN system is also not going to change the fact that hundreds of journalists and human rights defenders die each year in Pakistan due to systematic killings, including extrajudicial ones,” Badhe said.
Incessant attempts to malign India in all international forums is not going to change the fact that tens of thousands of minorities would not stop fleeing Pakistan, he added.
The Indian representative said, “Resorting to abusive and unacceptable language against India in this august forum can’t rectify Pakistan’s dubious human rights record. Pakistan’s India focus agenda demonstrates its own hollowness when it comes to accountability and justice for oppressing those standing for their rights.”
The pathetic state of affairs for journalists and human rights defenders is well known when the deep state could make prominent journalists disappear in broad daylight in the heart of Pakistan, the Indian diplomat pointed out.
“We could only imagine the fate of those journalists and human rights defenders in territories under its control. Silence is the apt word for them effected through enforced disappearances, murders, detentions, custodial deaths and torture in Baluchistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and Pakistan occupied parts of Indian Union Territories of Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh,” he said.
While the world has progressed well, Badhe said that Pakistan is still at the crossroads to understand the real meaning of modern laws, democracy and human rights.
“The language of accountability, civic space, fundamental freedom and public participation is yet to find resonance with the authorities of Pakistan,” he said.
Of course, the world has witnessed the history of Pakistan where voice of dissent is brutally muzzled without fail, he added.
“We are not baffled that Pakistan does well when it comes to inciting hatred against religious minorities and targeting our leadership with hate speeches. Its well cherished and inherited culture of hatred makes it the perfect candidate for carrying forward the legacy of intolerance against anybody having modern views on human rights,” Badhe said.
The Indian diplomat said that Pakistan should not make mockery of the “august forum when it attempts to self-crown itself as an ardent supporter of political dissidents, journalists, social activists, minorities and human rights defenders. For that Pakistan has many miles to go.”
