Second Right of Reply by India under Agenda Item 8 at the 41^st Session

of the Human Rights Council (24 June – 12 July 2019) delivered by

Ms. Mini Devi Kumam, First Secretary, Permanent Mission of India

[Geneva, 08 July 2019]

India exercises its second right of reply to Pakistani statement.

2. Enough documentation is available on human rights record of Pakistan. India’s commitment to promotion and protection of human rights is second to none. Spreading venom and lies and targeting every political figures in India is not going to improve Pakistan’s own abysmal human rights situations. No amount of hyperbole can hide the dismal human rights record of Pakistan, which has been systematically violating the rights and freedoms of people of PoJK including exploitation of their natural resources. Extrajudicial killings and disappearances in Sindh, Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa continue to be the order of the day. Minorities are harassed through blasphemy laws. Forced conversions and marriages of minority women are routinely carried out with impunity. Even Muslim minorities such as Shias, Ahmadiyas, Ismailia and Hazaras are victims to sectarian violence and systemic persecution.

2. The Pakistani deep state has orchestrated demographic change by bringing in Punjabis and Pashtuns, absorption of occupied territories, denial of basic constitutional, political, civil and economic rights, systemic army persecution and violence against the people in the Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir. Deliberate discriminatory policies have caused extreme poverty, underdevelopment and forcible deprivation of land. Politically motivated torture is routinely used to compel politicians, political activists and journalists critical of the government to silence them.

3. Pakistan has another distinction of being a country that used air power against its own citizens to snuff out legitimate pollical criticisms. It is the country that protected Osama Bin Laden and sheltered Mullah Omar right under its nose hoodwinking the world. It is also the country that unleashed the most barbaric and horrible atrocities that human kind could never imagine against millions of innocent civilians in 1971.

Thank you, Mr. Vice President.

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