50th session of the Human Rights Council

(13 June – 08 July 2022)

Right of Reply under Agenda Item 2: ID on the Annual Report of HC, delivered by Ms. Seema Pujani, First Secretary, Permanent Mission of India

[Geneva, 14th June, 2022]

Madam Vice-President,

India is exercising the right of reply in response to the statement delivered by Pakistan in the Interactive Dialogue on the Annual Report of the High Commissioner under Agenda Item 2.

Pakistan’s attempts at disinformation and propaganda against India are not new but have increasingly become more desperate, fictitious and malicious. The platform offered by this august Council for dialogue and constructive engagement has been misused by Pakistan yet again.

Madam Vice-President,

It is shameful that a country, whose top leadership has in the past openly admitted that its military and intelligence agency have created terrorist groups and trained them to fight in Afghanistan and the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, has the audacity to comment on the human rights of people in India.

The perpetrators of 2008 Mumbai terror attack have remained unpunished. The world remembers the horrors of the 2016 Pathankot terror attack. We all know where the perpetrators of these attacks came from. It was in February 2019 that 40 brave men of Indian security forces were martyred in a dastardly terrorist attack in Pulwama carried out by Jaish-e-Mohammad, a Pakistan based terrorist organisation proscribed by the UN.

Pakistan has failed in meeting the global demand for dismantling of the terrorism mill in Pakistan that churns out terrorists who are responsible for violating the most fundamental of human rights, the right to life, of people in our region and around the world. Pakistan has ignored the reality that it has become a victim of its own State policies to nurture terrorist organizations.

Madam Vice-President,

In its concluding observations on the initial report of Pakistan, the Human Rights Committee had expressed serious concern over its blasphemy laws that carry draconian penalties, including mandatory death sentence, and over hate crimes against persons belonging to religious minorities. However, in the absence of State action, Pakistan’s minority communities continue to be victims of targeted sectarian violence.

Murder by vigilantes on flimsy allegations of blasphemy, extrajudicial killings, rape, abduction, forced conversion to Islam, forced marriage of minor girls and attacks on places of worship remain a sad reality for Pakistan’s Hazara Shias, Ahmadiyas, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians. As a result of persistent discrimination and state persecution, the number of minorities has continued to decline in Pakistan.

I thank you.