Indian official terms Pakistan ‘Terroristan’ in UNGA

UNITED NATIONS: India reacted at lower level with obnoxious remarks to the statement made by Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on Thursday where he highlighted Indian brutalities in the Indian Held Kashmir (IOK) and grave human rights besides other subjects. 

Indian reply came through Ms. Eenam Gambhir, a first secretary in the Indian permanent mission to the UN, who described Pakistan as 'Terroristan' and a land of 'pure terror' that hosts a flourishing industry to produce and export global terrorism. 

In a no-holds-barred speech at the United Nations General Assembly, India's representative said it was extraordinary that the state which protected Osama Bin Laden and sheltered Mullah Omar should have the gumption to play the victim.

India was exercising its right to reply after Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi raised the Kashmir issue at the UNGA. Diplomatic sources told The News that Pakistan will also exercise the right of reply to the Indian observations. 

Indian Minister for External Affairs Sushma Swaraj will make statement on behalf of her country on Saturday (today).  "By now, all Pakistan’s neighbours are painfully familiar with these tactics to create a narrative based on distortions, deception and deceit,” Gambhir said, asserting that efforts at creating alternative facts do not change reality. 

"In its short history, Pakistan has become geography synonymous with terror," she said.  "Playing on the country's name, which means 'land of pure', she said the quest for a land of pure has actually produced 'the land of pure terror'. 

Pakistan is now 'Terroristan', with a flourishing industry producing and exporting global terrorism,” she said.  Gambhir noted that Pakistan's current state can be gauged from the fact that Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, a leader of the United Nations-designated terrorist organisation Lashkar-e-Tayiba, was now sought to be legitimised as a leader of a political party. 

She said Pakistan's counter-terrorism policy was to mainstream and upstream terrorists by either providing safe havens to global terror leaders in its military towns, or protecting them with 'political careers'. 

"The state of Jammu and Kashmir is and will always remain an integral part of India. However much it scales up cross-border terrorism, it will never succeed in undermining India’s territorial integrity,” she said. 

Attacking Pakistan, Gambhir said having diverted billions of dollars in international military and development aid towards creating a 'dangerous infrastructure of terror' on its own territory, Pakistan was now speaking of the high cost of its terror industry.

"The polluter, in this case, is paying the price," she said. "Even as terrorists thrive in Pakistan and roam its streets with impunity, we have heard it lecture about the protection of human rights in India. The world does not need lessons on democracy and human rights from a country whose own situation is charitably described as a failed state," Gambhir said.

"Terroristan is in fact a territory whose contribution to the globalisation of terror is unparalleled. Pakistan can only be counseled to abandon a destructive worldview that has caused grief to the entire world. If it could be persuaded to demonstrate any commitment to civilization, order, and to peace, it may still find some acceptance in the comity of nations," she said. 

An official from Pakistan while talking to The News here said foul-mouthing by an Indian official couldn’t alter facts about India on ground. Instead of mending its approach Indians are engaged in using obnoxious language which is unbecoming of a diplomat, he added.