On Saturday (September 25), Indian diplomat Sneha Dubey lambasted Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan for trying to internationalise the Kashmir issue at the United National General Assembly (UNGA). The Indian diplomat used India’s first right to reply after Imran Khan made several allegations against India in his speech at the UNGA.
In his virtual address [pdf] at the UN on Friday (September 24), Imran Khan had alleged, “The worst and most pervasive form of Islamophobia now rules India. The hate-filled ‘Hindutva’ ideology, propagated by the fascist RSS-BJP regime, has unleashed a reign of fear and violence against India’s 200 million-strong Muslim community. Mob lynching by cow vigilantes; frequent pogroms, such as the one in New Delhi last year; discriminatory citizenship laws to purge India of Muslims; and a campaign to destroy mosques across India and obliterate its Muslim heritage and history, are all part of this criminal enterprise.”
Khan further claimed that the Indian government had been mulling a ‘final solution’ to resolve the 70-year-dispute through ‘illegal and unilateral measures. The Pakistani Prime Minister alleged that India had captured senior Kashmiri separatists, abducted 1300 young Kashmiris, imposed lockdown and killed 100s of people in fake encounters. “We have unveiled a detailed dossier on gross and systematic violations of human rights by the Indian Security Forces in Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. This repression is accompanied by illegal efforts to change the demographic structure of the occupied territory, and transform it from a Muslim majority into a Muslim minority,” he said.
The Pakistani Prime Minister blamed the Indian State of ‘barbarity’ and ‘forcible snatching of the dead body of separatist Syed Ali Geelani. “Devoid of any legal or moral sanction, this action was even against the basic norms of human decency,” he went on with his outlandish claims. “Sadly, the BJP government has intensified repression in Kashmir and continues to vitiate the environment by these barbaric acts. The onus remains on India to create a conducive environment for meaningful and result-oriented engagement with Pakistan,” Imran Khan concluded.
Response of Diplomat Sneha Dubey to Pakistani PM Imran Khan
On Saturday (September 25), Indian diplomat and First Secretary Sneha Dubey exercised the ‘Right to reply’ and demolished the allegations levelled against India by Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. She began by slamming Imran Khan for raking up India’s internal matter i.e Kashmir on a global platform. Accusing the Pakistani Prime Minister of spreading falsehoods and tarnishing India’s image, Dubey added that Pakistan is an arsonist living under the garb of a firefighter.
“While such statements deserve our collective contempt and sympathy for the mindset of the person who utters falsehood repeatedly, I am taking the floor to set the record straight. We keep hearing that Pakistan is a ‘victim of terrorism. This is the country which is an arsonist disguising itself as a firefighter. Pakistan nurtures terrorists in their backyard in the hope that they will only harm their neighbours. Our region, and in fact the entire world, has suffered because of their policies. On the other hand, they are trying to cover up sectarian violence in their country as acts of terror,” she remarked.
Sneha Dubey reiterated that the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of India and asked Pakistan to immediately vacate its occupied territory (PoK). She pointed out how Imran Khan had misused global platforms to peddle anti-India propaganda while harbouring homegrown terrorists at the same time. The Indian diplomat emphasised how slain terrorist such as Osama bin Laden was found in Abbottabad in Pakistan.
Watch: India exercises its right of reply at the #UNGA @AmbTSTirumurti @MEAIndia @harshvshringla pic.twitter.com/YGcs28fYYa
— India at UN, NY (@IndiaUNNewYork) September 25, 2021
“Even today, Pakistan leadership glorify him as a martyr. Regrettably, even today we heard the leader of Pakistan trying to justify acts of terror. Such defence of terrorism is unacceptable in the modern world. However, it is for Islamabad to work sincerely towards creating a conducive atmosphere, including by taking credible, verifiable and irreversible actions to not allow any territory under its control to be used for cross border terrorism against India in any manner,” she added. Dubey said that Pakistan has the highest number of UN-designated terrorists.
While speaking about the atrocities on dissenters and religious minorities, she concluded, “This is a regime where anti-Semitism is normalised by its leadership and even justified…Dissenting voices are muzzled daily, and enforced disappearances and extra-judicial killings are well documented…Pluralism is a concept which is very difficult to understand for Pakistan which constitutionally prohibits its minorities from aspiring for high offices of the State. The least they could do is introspect before exposing themselves to ridicule on the world stage.”
Right of reply at the UN
At the United Nations, delegates are allowed to make two interventions on a topic during meetings. This is known as the right of reply. India used the ‘first right of reply’ means it was the first intervention made by the Indian representative at the UN responding to Imran Khan’s speech. India can present a second reply using the second right of reply, if it so desires. According to UN rules, the first reply should be limited to 10 minutes, while a maximum of 5 minutes is allowed for the second reply.
