AMN / WEB DESK
India has reiterated that Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh are integral and inalienable part of the country and steps by the government to ensure good governance and development in these UTs are internal matter.
Second Secretary, Permanent Mission of India to UN, Seema Pujani said this while exercising Right of Reply under the High Level segment of 46th Session of the Human Rights Council in response to Pakistan’s statement. She said it is not surprising that Pakistan’s representative has chosen to misuse the forum. She has added that Pakistan’s continued misuse of various platforms to engage in baseless and malicious propaganda against India is not new.
The Second Secretary said as a country with one of the world’s worst human rights records, Pakistan should put its own house in order before pointing finger at India. She said violence, institutionalized discrimination and persecution faced by Pakistan’s minorities, including Christians, Sikhs and Hindus, continued unabated. She said, there have been frequent attacks on the places of worship of minority communities. Ms Pujani pointed out that the condition of women belonging to minority communities – Hindus, Sikhs and Christians, remains deplorable. An estimated one thousand women from minority communities are subjected to abduction followed by forced conversion and forced marriage in Pakistan every year, according to a recent report published by the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
Ms Pujani also said, the recent acquittal of Omar Saeed Sheikh, the al-Qaeda terrorist and murderer of the American journalist Daniel Pearl by the Pakistani Supreme Court is a clear example of the Pakistani establishment’s nexus with terrorist entities.