India continues terror activities against Pakistan, other nations: UN told

UNITED NATIONS: Pakistan Counsellor Gul Qaiser Sarwani apprised the United Nations on Friday that India sponsored terror activities not against just Pakistan but other nations as well.

"India has been the primary perpetrator, supporter and financer of terrorism for decades," the counsellor, representing Permanent Mission of Pakistan to the UN, stated this in response to India’s "baseless and misleading" allegations against Islamabad at the debate 'Leadership for Peace' held under the United Nations Security Council (UNSC).

He said India continued to paddle a false narrative on the forum, relying on tactics of denial, distortion and deflection.

Referring to Indian intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing (RAW), as a terrorist franchise, Sarwani said it had "gone global with assassinations and attempted murders of political dissidents on North American soil".

Earlier this month, General Counsel of pro-Khalistan group Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, through his attorneys, had filed a civil lawsuit in the US Federal District Court against the Government of India and senior RAW officials for their "unprecedented attempt to assassinate a US citizen on US soil".

Legal action has been initiated at United States District Court, New York, by Pannun and his lawyers against the Indian government and senior officials of Indian intelligence agency — namely, Ajit Doval, Samant Goel, Vikram Yadav and Nikhil Gupta.

The complaint alleged that senior officials at India’s spy agency RAW, which report directly to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, engaged weapons trafficker and RAW agent Nikhil Gupta to hire assassins in the US to murder Pannun in New York. This scheme was foiled when the hitmen Gupta hired turned out to be undercover federal agents.

The Pakistan counsellor said India’s sponsorship of terrorist organisations such as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) had led to the loss of thousands of innocent Pakistani lives.

Sarwani said Pakistan had shared irrefutable evidence of India’s involvement in terrorism with international community.

“The arrest and conviction of Kulbhushan Yadev, a serving Indian naval officer and an operative of India’s intelligence agency RAW, is irrefutable evidence of India’s state sponsored terrorism against Pakistan including targeted assassinations,” he said.

"India must end its state sponsored terrorism, cease its illegal occupation of Jammu and Kashmir and fulfil its obligations under international law,” the counsellor demanded.

Sarwani said the UNSC through numerous resolutions had called for a free and impartial plebiscite to enable the people of Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir (IIOJK) to exercise their inalienable right to self-determination.

“Under Article 25 of the UN Charter, India is obligated to implement these resolutions. However, instead of honouring its obligations, India has chosen the path of repression,” he added.

The Pakistan counsellor apprised the forum that India had deployed nearly one million soldiers in IIOJK to suppress the Kashmiris' legitimate right.

He said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif shed light on those facts, which might be uncomfortable for India but it remained the truth which India could not deny.

“India has once again resorted to the tactic of deflecting global attention from its own terror activities by raising baseless accusation of terrorism. It is ironic that the country which uses terrorism as an instrument of state policy against its neighbours attempts to point fingers at others,” he maintained.

However, these distortions could not alter the reality that IIOJK was an internationally recognised disputed territory, he said.