India ready to counter Bilawal’s Kashmir agenda at UN

Pakistan Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s letter to the UN Human Rights chief “on the situation in Kashmir” is set to be countered by India strongly at the world forum soon. Indian envoys in New York are said to be preparing a tersely-worded response to the letter from Bilawal.

Sources told The Daily Guardian Review that India has,

however, already reached out to the UN through diplomatic channels to apprise the forum of New Delhi’s views on the same. Pakistan’s record on human rights issues is known to one and all in the global community. “Human rights violations and atrocities on people of minority communities are the order of the day,” said diplomats. Indian diplomats have prepared a set of dossiers regarding the cases of the human rights abuses in Pakistan, which will be handed over to the authority concerned at the UN and other world forums, highly-placed sources told this newspaper.

India has repeatedly told Pakistan that Jammu and Kashmir “was, is and shall forever” remain an integral part of the country. It also advised Pakistan to accept the reality and stop all anti-India propaganda. “Bilawal’s letter to the United Nations Human Rights chief is part of Pakistan’s Kashmir agenda aimed at diverting the world focus from terrorism that is being sponsored by the state actors there,” sources said.

The UN authorities have been urged to see through the design and motive behind Bilawal’s Kashmir rant and the whole agenda to globalize it. “The issues he has reportedly highlighted in the letter are far from reality and a clear bid to divert the UN’s attention from the real and core issue of terrorism being harboured by Islamabad,” sources said.

“If Pakistan desires normal neighbourly relations with India, it should create an environment free of terror, hostility and violence. But the manner in which both Pakistan’s FM and PM Shehbaz Sharif are behaving conveys a different message altogether and the message is that Islamabad is not serious in terms of creating a positive atmosphere,” sources added.

Bilawal has reportedly written to UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet to urge India to acquit Kashmiri separatist leader Yasin Malik from all charges and ensure his immediate release from prison “so that he can be reunited with his family”. Pakistan’s Foreign Office said in a statement that the foreign minister, as part of Pakistan’s ongoing efforts to draw the attention of the international community to the situation in Kashmir, sent the letter to Bachelet on 24 May. “The letter apprises the High Commissioner, in particular, of the Indian government’s ongoing attempts to persecute and repress the Kashmiris and their leadership and to implicate them in fictitious and motivated cases,” according to the FO. According to sources, External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar in a brief interaction with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the sidelines of the Quad leaders’ summit in Tokyo, Japan, raised Pakistan in the backdrop of the growing terrorism in India’s backyard. The Quad statement also sent out a strong message to Pakistan over terrorism, mentioning the Pathankot and Mumbai terror attacks.