ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has strongly rejected Indian allegations of minority rights violations, accusing New Delhi of persecuting its own citizens and “exporting chaos abroad,” the state-owned Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) news agency reported on Thursday.
The exchange took place during a debate in the United Nations General Assembly on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), a global commitment aimed at preventing genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity.
Addressing the session, Pakistan’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Usman Jadoon, criticized what he described as the selective application of the R2P doctrine, saying it had become “meaningless” in the face of the international community’s failure to prevent mass atrocities in Palestine and Indian-administered Kashmir.
India responded by accusing Pakistan of violating the rights of its minorities and being complicit in a recent militant attack in Pahalgam, in Indian-administered Kashmir.
Exercising her right of reply, Pakistani delegate Rabia Ijaz, a second secretary at Pakistan’s UN Mission, dismissed the accusations as “a textbook case of the perpetrator posturing as a victim.”
“A state that has weaponized hate, normalized mob violence and codified discrimination against its own citizens – and against those it occupies – has no moral standing to speak on the Responsibility to Protect,” the APP quoted her as saying.
Ijaz went on to describe India as a “majoritarian autocracy,” where minorities, particularly Muslims, Christians and Dalits, face discrimination.
“Lynching is met with silence,” she continued. “Bulldozers become tools of collective punishment. Mosques are razed. Citizenship is denied based on religion.”
“This is not the protection of people,” she added. “This is their persecution, sanctified by law and celebrated by power.”
Ijaz maintained India had launched an “unprovoked and deliberate” cross-border attack on civilian areas in Pakistan earlier this year in May, killing 35 people.
“R2P cannot become a slogan for serial violators to hide behind,” she said. “It cannot be invoked by those who deny rights at home and export chaos abroad.”
India and Pakistan have long been at odds with each other, though diplomatic tensions have intensified in recent years.
The two nuclear-armed neighbors have repeatedly traded barbs at international forums particularly after their relationship deteriorated following the recent four-day military standoff, one of the most serious flare-ups in several decades.
