Taxila has now turned into Ivy League of Terrorism – India hits back at Pak at UN
Delhi: Ripping Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif speech apart, India on Thursday said at the United Nations that Pakistan was the ‘Ivy League of Terrorism.'
First Secretary at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN, Eenam Gambhir said that it was “ironical that we have seen today the preaching of human rights and ostensible support for self-determination by a country which has established itself as the global epicenter of terrorism.”
Exercising India's Right of Reply to Sharif's ‘long tirade' about the situation in Kashmir, Gambhir made a strong rebuttal.
“The worst violation of human rights is terrorism. When practiced as an instrument of state policy it is a war crime,” she said.
“What my country and our other neighbours are facing today is Pakistan's long-standing policy of sponsoring terrorism, the consequences of which have spread well beyond our region,” she added.
Gambhir said India sees in Pakistan ‘a terrorist state' which channelises billions of dollars, much of it diverted from international aid, to training, financing and supporting terrorist groups as militant proxies against its neighbours.
In a reference to JeM chief Masood Azhar and Mumbai terror attack mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, she said terrorist entities and their leaders, including many designated by the UN, continue to roam the streets of Pakistan freely and operate with State's support.
“With the approval of authorities, many terrorist organisations raise funds openly in flagrant violation of Pakistan's international obligations,” Gambhir said.
“Even today we have heard support by the Prime Minister of Pakistan for a self-acknowledged commander of a known terrorist organisation,” she said.
She said while Pakistan's nuclear proliferation record is marked by “deception and deceit,” it talks about restraint, renunciation and peace.
“Similar false promises it has made to us – the international community on terrorism. Perhaps renunciation of lies and self-restraint on threats could be a good place for Pakistan to start,” Gambhir said.
In his nearly 20-minute speech yesterday night, almost half of which was focussed on Kashmir, Sharif had hailed Hizbul Mujahideen militant Burhan Wani – who was killed on July 8 by the Indian forces resulting in tensions in the Valley – as a ‘young leader' and the ‘symbol' of the Kashmiris' freedom movement.
Sharif had said in his speech at UN that Pakistan fully supported Kashmiris' right to self-determination and demanded an ‘independent enquiry' into the ‘extrajudicial killings' in Kashmir.
Sharif had added that Wani had become “the symbol of the new Kashmiri intifada that was led by common Kashmiris.”.
He had also spoken of ‘Indian brutalities' and “human rights violations by Indian forces” in the Kashmir Valley, and had said that Pakistan would present a dossier on Kashmir to the world body.
Sharif, whose government has persistently been raising the Kashmir issue at the international fora, had further said that his country wanted peace with India and had gone the extra mile to achieve that, but India has ‘imposed preconditions'.
Sharif had gone on to say that the ‘indigenous uprising' in Kashmir has been met with “brutal repression by Indian soldiers” and would “only fortify the determination of Kashmiris to fight for their rights”
