India on Sunday slammed Pakistan at the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), saying the country with an established history of “harbouring, aiding and actively supporting terrorists” should not make comments on human rights. Representing the Indian delegation at the IPU, Deputy Chairman of Rajya Sabha, Harivansh Narayan Singh, also reiterated that Jammu and Kashmir has been and will remain an “integral and inalienable part of India”.
“I take the floor to reject the preposterous comments made by Pakistan against my country. India is the largest democracy in the world, and I am privileged that many consider the Indian democracy a model to be emulated,” Harivansh Singh said at the IPU.
Harivansh Singh made the statements using India’s right to reply during the 148th session of the IPU in Geneva, Switzerland.
Attacking Pakistan further, he said that “lectures” by a nation which has an “abysmal track record of democracy is laughable, to say the least”.
“It would have been better if Pakistan did not undermine the importance of a platform like IPU by such absurd allegations and false narratives,” he added.
Referring to allegations made by Pakistan about Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, the Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman, said, “As regards the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, they have been and will always remain an integral and inalienable part of India. No amount of rhetoric and propaganda from anyone can override this fact.”
He suggested Pakistan instead focus on stopping its “terror factories that continue to launch countless cross-border terrorist attacks in Jammu and Kashmir while farcically claiming to champion the cause of human rights”.
Harivansh Singh also reminded the IPU audience that the face of “global terror”, Osama Bin Laden – founder of terror outfit al-Qaeda – “was found in Pakistan”. “The country holds the ignoble record of hosting one of the largest number of terrorists proscribed by the UN Security Council,” he said.
India has hit out at Pakistan on a number of occasions lately on international platforms. Last month, at the 55th Human Rights Council of the United Nations, India’s First Secretary at the UN Human Rights Council, Anupama Singh, rejected Pakistan and Turkey’s mention of Jammu and Kashmir on the platform. In her address, she pointed out Pakistan’s own human rights record as “truly abysmal” and highlighted three ‘red’ the nation was “soaked in”.
“We cannot pay any further attention to a country that speaks while being soaked in red – the red of the bloodshed from the terrorism it sponsors around the world; the red of its debt-riddled national balance sheets; and the red of the shame of its own people feel for their government having failed to serve their actual interests,” she said.
