Pakistan hits back at India’s human rights record - 17 / 9 / 16

Pak says Indian focus on Balochistan "is to distract attention from the repression unleashed in Kashmir."

Pakistan on Saturday criticised India over alleged human rights violation in Kashmir and threatened to expose the country in the world over the “abysmal rights situation” in other parts if it continued to talk about Balochistan.

Pakistan said the sudden Indian focus on Balochistan was consistent with their “playbook of seeking to distract attention from the repression unleashed in Kashmir.”

“It is interference”

Pakistan’s delegation to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) strongly rebutted India’s “untenable stance” on Jammu and Kashmir and slammed its “persistent interference” in Balochistan.

“In strongly-worded right of replies, the Pakistan delegate termed India’s attempts to deny its illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir a ‘travesty of history’,” Pakistan Foreign Office said.

The delegate said Pakistan was not surprised by the “intemperate” remarks of the Indian leadership and the Indian delegation, which constitute “open interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs, especially in Balochistan.”

“The increasing international attention being given to the plight of the Kashmiri people is being desperately countered by New Delhi by attempting to shift attention elsewhere,” it said.

“Flouting of international norms”

Given the “persistent, irresponsible flouting of international norms governing inter-state behaviour by India, we are constrained to point out the abysmal human rights record of the Indian government,” the Foreign Office said.

The delegate referred to a bill in Indian Parliament seeking to penalise those who depict Jammu and Kashmir as a disputed territory and said “this was yet another pathetic effort to alter facts to conform to their own deluded sense of reality.”

The delegate drew the attention of the Council to the recent statement by a People’s Democratic Party MP, who has described the current Indian repression as “worse than the Nazi forces.”

‘Egregious violations’

The delegate pointed out the “egregious violations” of human rights of people in large swathes of India and that Pakistan had scrupulously avoided commenting on India’s internal human rights situation.

“Pakistan has restrained itself from commenting on the unrelenting repression unleashed by the Indian State in many of its areas,” the Foreign Office said.

“We, instead, only address the situation in Kashmir, as that is an international dispute acknowledged in repeated U.N. resolutions,” it said.

“The fact that we do not comment on the abysmal rights situations in other parts of India, is not due to lack of awareness of the shameful record of the Indian State. Rather, it stems from a scrupulous observance of international norms — something which India is incapable of doing,” it said.

This is the irony: India

Stepping up its offensive against Pakistan on the Balochistan issue at the UNHRC, India had on Friday said Pakistan was a nation that practiced terrorism on its own people and the sufferings of the people of Balochistan were a telling testimony in this regard.

Exercising its right of reply and raising the Balochistan issue for the second time in three days at the UNHRC, India said the irony of a nation that has established a well-earned reputation of being the global epicentre of terrorism holding forth on human rights.