New Delhi The Indian delegate at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York walked out of the hall when Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan’s pre-recorded statement was played on Friday. The delegate, a junior diplomat named Mijito Vinito from the 2010 batch of the Indian Foreign Service, picked up his papers and left the hall as Khan’s speech was played on a large overhead screen.
Khan raised the Kashmir dispute, as he has done in several recent speeches to multilateral bodies, and criticised the Indian government on several issues.
After Khan’s speech, TS Tirumurti, India’s permanent representative to the UN, tweeted that the country would use the “right of reply” facility to respond to the Pakistani premier’s address.
“PM of Pakistan statement a new diplomatic low – at 75th UN General Assembly. Another litany of vicious falsehood, personal attacks, war mongering and obfuscation of Pakistan’s persecution of its own minorities & of its cross-border terrorism. Befitting Right of Reply awaits,” Tirumurti said in his tweet.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to address the UN General Assembly through a video statement on Saturday.
Earlier in the day, in a thinly veiled attack on Pakistan, India told the UN Human Rights Council on Friday that banned terror groups are collecting funds amid the Covid-19 pandemic ostensibly for charitable activities that would be diverted to finance terrorism.
There are also “malevolent attempts by terrorists to exploit the financial and emotional distress caused by the lockdowns to disturb the cohesiveness of societies”, Pawan Badhe, first secretary in India’s permanent mission in Geneva, told a debate on human rights situations that require the council’s attention.
“The increased presence of people online and on social media has been targeted by terrorists to disseminate misinformation through hate speeches, fake news and doctored videos,” he said.
“The intent has been to entice and establish links with vulnerable individuals and recruit them in their cadres. Terror groups have also exhorted supporters to target security forces and health workers,” he added.
Another disturbing trend, Badhe said, was the “collection of funds by proscribed terrorist outfits ostensibly for undertaking charitable activities, but which, in reality, would be used to finance terror”.
Though India’s intervention in the debate didn’t name any country, it was apparent the reference was to Pakistan. India has repeatedly accused Pakistan of failing to counter fund-raising and recruitment by UN-designated terror groups operating from its soil, including Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed.
“Terrorism is the grossest affront to the enjoyment of the inalienable human right to life and to live in peace and security. It poses a serious threat to economic and social development, undermines democracy and jeopardises the rule of law,” Badhe said.
He described terrorism as “an attack against freedom of thought, expression and association” and said: “While acts of terrorism violate the rights of individual victims, it also deeply affects the enjoyment of a range of rights by the families of the victims and society as a whole. Any terrorist incident disproportionately affects the human rights of women, girls and children.”
The UN Human Rights Council cannot remain immune to the “devastating human rights impacts” of terrorism, and it needs to play a key role in creating awareness about protecting the rights of the most vulnerable groups, particularly children and youngsters, to prevent their radicalisation and indoctrination by terrorist ideologies, he said.
“As the world grapples with Covid-19, it is important to cooperate among states coherently to fight against terrorists, whose disruptive activities have continued and, in fact, increased during the pandemic,” Badhe said.
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