India Warns Pakistan at UN: Continued Cross-Border Terrorism Will Have Consequences
By Anjali Sharma
UNITED NATIONS – India on Saturday has warned Pakistan that continued cross-border terrorism would have consequences, while rejected Islamabad’s remarks on India and Jammu and Kashmir in a sharp response to Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s address to the UNGA.
First Secretary at the Permanent Mission of India to the UN, Petal Gahlot on Friday exercised India’s right of reply to the Pakistan Prime Minister’s speech at the UNGA warned that cross-border terrorism by Pakistan would have consequences, while strongly rejecting Islamabad’s remarks on India and Jammu and Kashmir.
She declared that the Indian Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir “is an integral and inalienable part of my country” and “will always remain so”.
“But if we must talk about Kashmir, let us turn our attention to Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir,” she said.
She said “Ask the people of Rawalakot about the wanton killings, the brutal violence and the denial of basic rights that they have long experienced,”.
According to human rights groups, over 90 people have been killed in recent months in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, where the government has been brutally putting down a popular movement against importing people from elsewhere to take over the area and against election manipulation.
India slammed the “bizarre” attack on India by Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at the high level debate remindied the world of Pakistan’s “horrendous” role in the 9/11 terrorist attack not far from the UN 25 years ago.
Gahlot reminded Sharif that he was but a henchman for “a regime of the Army, by the Army, and for the Army”.
“Their puppets may come and go but let us have no illusion who calls the shots,” she said.
“They claim to uphold security during the day; they actually carry out terrorism at night,” she said.
The mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Osama Bin Laden, “was living right on the doorstep of Pakistan Army’s premier academy”, she said.
He was caught by a team of US Navy SEALs in Abbottabad, near the Pakistan Military Academy, the premier defence institution.
“And this was the very entity which was the subject of such deep genuflection before us today by the representative of Pakistan,” Gahlot said.
She referred to Sharif’s repeated homage to Field Marshal Syed Asim Munir during his speech, unusual because he is not an elected official.
In fact, he “elects” the leaders of Pakistan, and reinforcing that, Gahlot said, “All this is only to be expected from what Pakistanis themselves call a ‘Form 47 government’.”
“Form 47” is an election document that was manipulated by the military in the 2024 election to let Sharif into the prime ministership, leading to Pakistanis adopting that as a slogan to ridicule Sharif.
“We heard some hypocritical homilies about democratic rights and human values from a regime whose capital at this very moment is being fortified against its own people,” Gahlot said.
She added that was because, far from being a democracy, Pakistan is a country under the military’s thumb.
That “reality of Pakistan is expressed in its 27th Amendment”, which gave “lifelong immunity granted to its real ruler”, Munir.
Gahlot ridiculed Sharif’s statements about religious intolerance in India said, “The views we heard emanate from those with a long record of bigotry and hatred”.
“This Assembly was subjected to remarks about religious intolerance from the very regime whose mainstay is blasphemy laws,” she said.
She said the so-called blasphemy laws in Pakistan carry the death penalty and are used to intimidate and persecute religious minorities.
“The world knows how minorities are treated in Pakistan; no pious platitude can mislead it,” she said.
Gahlot took on the claims by Sharif about India’s Operation Sindoor, carried out to avenge the religiously motivated killing of 26 Indians by Pakistan-based terrorists of The Resistance Front, a proxy for the Lashkar-e-Taiba, and break their bases.
“We demonstrated last year that terrorists will have nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,” Gahlot said.
“Our right to defend ourselves against terrorism will be exercised,” she warned.
Ms. Gahlot said “Continued terrorism by Pakistan will have consequences.”
“It will understandably call into question what were premised on friendship and goodwill.”
Gahlot said, “We are confident that this Assembly will recognise Pakistan and its policies for what they really are; not what its representative mendaciously projects it to be.”
She called out what has become a regular ritual for Islamabad, she said, “Reiterating falsehoods year after year does not make them true.”
“Pakistan’s terrorism, deceit and duplicity will neither benefit it nor the world,” she advised its rulers.
