India describes Pakistan as a “living example” of how the state continues to avoid accountability for genocide and ethnic cleansing

*Paromita Das

India slammed Pakistan after it raised the issue of Jammu and Kashmir in the UN Security Council, calling it a live example of how a country continues to avoid accountability for serious crimes such as genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bangladesh.

India has stated that it will continue to take firm and decisive action to combat cross-border terrorism.

Dr. Kajal Bhat, Counselor and Legal Adviser in India’s Permanent Mission to the UN, stated that she felt compelled to take the floor to respond to some of the falsehoods and malicious propaganda spread by Pakistani representatives, as they are accustomed to doing like a “broken record.”
“The irony is perhaps lost on Pakistan’s representative, given their shameful history of committing genocide in what was then East Pakistan, and is now Bangladesh, over 50 years ago for which there has not even been an acknowledgement, let alone apology or accountability,” Bhat said.

Earlier in the day, Minister of State for External Affairs Dr Rajkumar Ranjan Singh stated that accountability and justice cannot be linked to political expediency.

To ask them to reflect on this may be too much to ask, but the very least they could do is not sully the dignity of this Council. During ‘Operation Searchlight,’ innocent women, children, academics, and intellectuals were treated as weapons of war, according to Bhat.
She went on to say that Pakistan’s reign of terror on the people of what was then East Pakistan resulted in thousands of people being brutally killed and thousands of women being raped.

She claims that the only attempts at demographic change are being carried out by terrorists supported by Pakistan, who have been targeting members of religious minorities in Jammu and Kashmir, as well as those who refuse to toe their line.

She went on to say that the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh were and will always be an integral and inalienable part of India.