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Reuters
GENEVA
Pakistan’s foreign minister told the United Nations human rights forum on Tuesday that India’s military presence in the disputed Muslim-majority territory of Kashmir raised the spectre of genocide.
India, which stripped Kashmir of its autonomy on Aug. 5, in response accused Pakistan of “offensive rhetoric..of false allegations and concocted charges” against it.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi evoked past and current atrocities in Europe, Africa and Asia when he addressed the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva.
“The forlorn, traumatised towns, mountains, plains and valleys of Indian-occupied Jammu & Kashmir reverberate today, with the grim reminders of Rwanda, Srebrenica, the Rohingya, and the pogrom of Gujarat,” he said. “I shudder to mention the word genocide here, but I must... The Kashmiri people in the occupied territory - as a national, ethnic, racial and religious group of people - face grave threats to their lives, way of living and livelihoods from a murderous, misogynistic and xenophobic regime.” Later India’s diplomat Vijay Thakur Singh, took the floor at the forum to hit back.
“The world is aware that this fabricated narrative comes from the epicentre of global terrorism, where ring-leaders are sheltered for years,” she said.
“This country conducts cross-border terrorism as a form of alternate diplomacy,” she added, without naming Pakistan. Qureshi, speaking to reporters, said: “I do not see in the present environment any possibility of a bilateral engagement with India.” He urged U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the Security Council to help defuse tensions.
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11/09/2019
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