United Nations: India has accused Pakistan’s “Form 47” military rulers of weaponising terrorism as a distraction from its raging domestic discontent that is being suppressed by killing civilians in the area of Kashmir it illegally occupies and within its country.
“Instead of addressing domestic discontent, Pakistan seeks to distract by fomenting instability in India and sponsoring, inciting, abetting, and financing cross-border terrorism in my country for more than three decades”, said Bhavika Mangalanandan, a First Secretary in India’s UN Mission.
She invoked “Form 47”, an election document that the military rulers manipulated to put the pliable government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as its proxy in Islamabad in 2024, and it has metamorphosed into a meme of ridicule.
“The only human rights violation taking place in Kashmir is perpetrated by the armed forces of Pakistan and their terrorist proxies”, Mangalanandan said, exercising the right of reply to Pakistan’s allegations against India in the General Assembly’s Third Committee, which deals with social, humanitarian, and cultural issues.
She said making accusations against India “is a desperate attempt by Pakistan to mask the ongoing tragedy in Rawalakot and its other cities, the killing of hundreds of civilians, and the brutal crackdown across Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir, for merely demanding bread, electricity, and human dignity”.
According to human rights groups, over 90 people have been killed in recent months in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) alone, where the government has brutally put down a popular movement for economic rights and against importing people from elsewhere to take over the area and against election manipulation.
“This is of course unsurprising”, she said, because it is a natural outcome of prolonged military occupation of the region and repression.
“When any free media is banned from covering such news in Pakistan, the evidence becomes undeniable for the global community that only the writ of the ‘Form 47’ government and their masters in the army headquarters runs large”, she said.
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan remains in jail “even as his health is reported to be fast deteriorating”, and his party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), has not been allowed to run in elections, she said, calling out the military’s proxy claims to democracy.
Mangalanandan brought out the political and electoral distinctions between the conditions in Kashmir that is free of Pakistani military rule and the occupied region, as well as between the two countries.
“By contrast, Jammu and Kashmir held assembly elections in 2024 with a massive turnout, followed by a peaceful transfer of power to an elected government”, she said.
“The contrast could not have been starker”, she said. “We all know that the so-called civilian governments in Pakistan serve at the mercy of their army and rarely complete their terms”.
“The union territories of Jammu, Kashmir, and Ladakh were, are, and will always remain integral and inalienable parts of India”, she declared.
(IANS)
