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Regular-article-logo Saturday, 27 April 2024

India protests against UN Kashmir report

The report dwells in some detail on the post-Pulwama targeting of 'Kashmiri Muslims' outside Jammu and Kashmir in India

Our Special Correspondent New Delhi Published 09.07.19, 01:57 AM
An elderly Kashmiri woman waits for transport at a temporary check point during restrictions in Srinagar on Monday, July 8, 2019.

An elderly Kashmiri woman waits for transport at a temporary check point during restrictions in Srinagar on Monday, July 8, 2019. (AP)

India on Monday registered protest with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights for continuing with the “false and motivated narrative on the situation in Jammu and Kashmir’’ in its update of a 2018 report that New Delhi had rejected as “fallacious, tendentious and (politically) motivated”.

India has taken particular offence at the “contrived effort’’ by the OHCHR “to create an artificial parity between the world’s largest and the most vibrant democracy and a country that openly practises state-sponsored terrorism’’, the external affairs ministry said in a response to the update, released this morning.

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The OHCHR report highlights “serious human rights violations and patterns of impunity’’ in the Valley and “significant human rights concerns witnessed’’ in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. It dwells in some detail on the post-Pulwama targeting of “Kashmiri Muslims’’ outside J&K in India.

There is mention of individuals, journalists and even some political leaders inciting hatred and violence against Kashmiri Muslims, including a governor calling for a boycott of things made by the community.

“The update of the report of the OHCHR is merely a continuation of the earlier false and motivated narrative on the situation in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir,” foreign ministry spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said.

“Its assertions are in violation of India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and ignore the core issue of cross-border terrorism. A situation created by years of cross-border terrorist attacks emanating from Pakistan has been ‘analysed’ without any reference to its causality.”

India also expressed concern at the way the update had accorded “legitimacy to terrorism’’ at “complete variance with UN Security Council positions’’. New Delhi recalled the Security Council’s condemnation of the Pulwama attack and the subsequent proscribing of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar.

The ministry stressed that terrorist leaders and organisations banned by the UN, including Jaish and the Lashkar-e-Toiba, were “deliberately underplayed” as “armed groups” in the OHCHR update.

The release of such an update has not only called into question the seriousness of the OHCHR but also its alignment with the larger approach of the United Nations, India said.

Claiming the new document had been prepared with a “prejudiced mindset’’, the Kumar added: “The update, by distorting India’s policies, practices and values, has undermined its own credibility. Its failure to recognise an independent judiciary, human rights institutions and other mechanisms in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir that safeguard, protect and promote constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights to all citizens of India is unpardonable.’’

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