Pakistan rebuts India at UN, slams rights abuses in Kashmir

Pakistan delivered a forceful rejoinder at the United Nations, accusing India of repeating a “recycled script” on Jammu and Kashmir and urging the world body to uphold its responsibility to discuss the dispute. Speaking at the UN General Assembly’s Fourth Committee on Decolonisation, Asif Khan of Pakistan’s Permanent Mission said Kashmir has never been an integral part of India and remains an internationally recognised dispute pending a UN-mandated plebiscite.

Khan argued that India’s actions violate international law and UN resolutions, invoking the 1960 UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence and core human rights covenants that enshrine self-determination. He alleged one of the world’s densest military deployments in the region, with civilians facing extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, mass imprisonments, sexual violence and demographic engineering in breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

The envoy said New Delhi brands an indigenous freedom struggle as terrorism to deflect from its own conduct, while what he called the RSS-BJP ideology fosters intolerance and institutionalises Islamophobia. Citing reports by human rights groups, he maintained that India’s claims of democratic credentials ring hollow amid the treatment of minorities.

On regional security, Khan referenced what he termed India’s recent unprovoked aggression against Pakistan and asserted Islamabad’s response was a measured exercise of self-defence under Article 51 of the UN Charter, aimed solely at military targets. He further accused India of financing militant proxies, naming the TTP, BLA and Majeed Brigade, and said those networks have killed thousands of Pakistani civilians.

Concluding, he insisted India’s denials cannot alter the legal and historical reality of Kashmir’s disputed status. Pakistan, he vowed, would continue to expose what it calls Indian state terrorism and stand by Kashmiris’ struggle for dignity and their right to self-determination through a free and impartial UN-supervised vote.